Organic carbon burial in fjords of South Georgia

PUBLICATION — Szczuciński W., Majewski, W. 2026. Organic carbon burial and sediment accumulation in the fjords of South Georgia, sub-Antarctic. The Holocene, doi.org/10.1177/09596836261422213

Figure: Fieldwork in fjords of South Georgia.

Despite their limited surface area, fjords play a disproportionately large role in the global organic carbon cycle. Those in the remote regions of the Southern Ocean are particularly poorly understood. As part of a project aimed at reconstructing changes in the ecosystems of South Georgia following the end of intensive whaling, the amount of carbon buried in South Georgia’s fjords and the factors controlling this amount were investigated. Our results suggest that with progressive warming carbon burial in fjords may temporarily increase, but it will decline in the longer term as retreat transforms fjords into river-dominated systems.