Background of the project

NUTS&BOLTS is a 4-year project funded by the EPA and Marine Institute Ireland. NUTS&BOLTS addresses knowledge gaps with regard to the impact of multiple environmental stressors on the cycling of nutrients and carbon in Ireland’s marine transitional zones (MTZs). Our overall goal is to improve our understanding, both qualitatively and quantitatively, of the physical and chemical processes, and their fluxes, that impact on biological activity in Irish coastal marine and transitional waters. Our overall approach has a number of novel applications to Irish waters, most notably through the use of Membrane Inlet Mass Spectrometry (MIMS) to assess O2/Ar ratios for productivity and climate relevant gases, assessing pico and nanoplankton abundance by flow cytometry, estimating the supply of trace elements via riverine fluxes including desorption from particles in the mixing zone and evaluation of nutrient controls on primary productivity through the use of bioassays and the measurements of urea, DON and DOP.