KL4

Global Subseafloor Ecosystem and Sustainability (GSES)

Fengping Wang1, Kai-Uwe Hinrichs2, Ken Takai3, Thulani Makhalanyane4, Mohamed Hatha Abdulla5, Mohamed Jebbar6

  1. School of Oceanography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China 
  2. Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM), University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany 
  3. Institute for Extra-cutting-edge Science and Technology Avant-garde Research (X-star), Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokosuka, China
  4. Department of Microbiology and The School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa 
  5. Department of Marine Biology, Microbiology and Biochemistry, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kerala, India 
  6. laboratory of Microbiology of Extreme Environment (LM2E), University of Brest, Brest, France 

The subseafloor ecosystem includes all life living in marine sediment, crust and the accompany fluids. This ecosystem is also called deep biosphere where the energy source mainly comes from geological processes, cut off from sunlight. Deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seeps are regarded as windows of the subsurface life. Still little is known about the subseafloor life regarding their diversity, assemblage, function, and possible services to human society which is not only the key to understand the origin of life and evolution, to explore extraterrestrial life, and also crucial to evaluate the impact of the proposed ocean-based climate interventions on Earth. Therefore, we initiate a global-scale program “Global Subseafloor Ecosystem and Sustainability” (GSES) to generate new systematic insights into subseafloor ecosystems and transform them into predictive capabilities. During this talk I will introduce the aims and goals of GSES, I will highlight findings from our group on sedimentary archaea, their roles in carbon fixation and carbon cycling, emphasizing the roles of Microbes in driving Carbon Transformation in marine Sediments (MCT-S). In the end, I’ll introduce research progress and challenges in marine crustal biosphere which is potentially the largest biosphere on this planet.