Dr Feifei Deng

Feifei is a post-doctoral researcher at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Her research focuses on understanding the climate- and human-induced changes in various Earth’s systems, such as the open ocean, coastal seas and rivers, using various isotope systems. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford, looking into the geochemistry of U-series nuclides in the modern ocean settings to evaluate the uses of these nuclides as proxies of the past and modern ocean processes related to the changing climate, such as deep ocean circulation and dust input to the open ocean. She has been involved in the GEOTRACES programme to examine the oceanic distribution of U-series nuclides in various basins in the Atlantic and participated in GEOTRACES research cruises. Apart from radionuclides in the ocean, she has also worked on developing isotope systems (such as Sr, Nd, Pb isotopes) to trace human impact in the river system and the coastal seas during her post-doctoral position at the Helmholtz Center, Hereon in Germany. 

Joining the Greenhouse Gas Removal via Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW-DDR) Demonstrator project, Feifei will focus her research on assessing the effectiveness, co-benefits and environmental impacts of the enhanced rock weathering field trials being conducted in different agroecosystems within the UK. To achieve these objectives, she will utilize a range of geochemical tools. In particular, she will explore the potential of isotope systems to understand the mechanisms and the rates of the enhanced rock weathering under natural conditions.  This work will provide quantified understanding of the effectiveness, co-benefits and environmental impacts of the enhanced rock weathering, and contribute to the modelling work undertaken within the ERW-DDR Demonstrator project.