AFRIVAL
“African river basins: catchment-scale carbon fluxes and transformations"
AFRIVAL is a joint ERC (European Research Council) Starting Grant project hosted at the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences (K.U.Leuven) and the Chemical Oceanography Unit (Université de Liège).
It provides 5-year funding to explore the role of tropical rivers in carbon cycling on the catchment scale, and uses an wide range of analytical approaches to gain a better understanding of the biogeochemistry of such systems, including proxies such as stable isotope signatures and 14C dating of various carbon pools, biomarker analyses, and measurements of processes such as respiration and photosynthesis rates or CO2 fluxes across the water-atmosphere.
Fieldwork within AFRIVAL is taking place in Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, Niger, Gabon, Madagascar and the Congo River basin (DRC Congo, Central African Republic).
This project builds forth on our earlier collaborations in tropical estuaries and mangroves, both in SE Asia and east Africa.