Earth System Science Seminar Series: Dr. Morgan Raven

Stanford, California

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About

EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
SEMINAR SERIES

October 8, 2026
12:00 - 1:00 PM
Y2E2, Room 299

Morgan Raven, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
University of California, Santa Barbara
Earth Science Department and Marine Science Program

“Evaluating the Potential Scale and Impacts of Marine Anoxic Carbon Storage for CO2 Removal”

Abstract
Given current CO2 emissions trajectories, it is increasingly clear that CO2 removal will be required to avoid a serious overshoot of global climate targets. Throughout Earth history, a central mechanism for climate cooling has been the burial of vast quantities of terrestrial organic matter (plants) in marine reservoirs, where their carbon can be preserved for thousands of years or more. Motivated by these analogs, we have been working to understand if and how significant CO2 could be stored away the atmosphere through the enhancement of terrestrial carbon burial in marine locations that maximize storage potential: isolated, deep, anoxic, and hypersaline basins like Orca Basin and the Black Sea. In this talk, I will present an overview of our collaborative work so far, including the results of lab and in-situ biomass incubations, and a theoretical assessment of long-term preservation efficiency in each system. Based on what we know so far, marine anoxic carbon storage may have the potential to contribute to near-term CO2 removal needs, but targeted research into key open questions is urgently needed to better constrain uncertainties in impacts and scale.

Biography
Morgan Raven is a biogeochemist and geobiologist who investigates the mechanisms of organic carbon preservation in anoxic environments, with a particular interest in the role of organic sulfur. She did her undergraduate and MS degrees at Stanford and then worked in environmental remediation for several years before grad school. She completed her PhD in environmental science and engineering at Caltech in 2016, developing sulfur isotope methods with Alex Sessions, and her Agouron postdoctoral fellowship at Washington U in St Louis, investigating Mesozoic ocean anoxic events with David Fike. She has led the NOISE Lab at UCSB since 2018.

ravennoiselab.com