Novel research on seabirds receives ERC Starting Grant

Seabird populations worldwide have declined by 70 per cent since the 1950s. The impact of such dramatic decline on the ecosystem is not yet well understood.

In the project SOSeabird, Chuxian Li and her research groupwill investigate how populations of seabirds have responded to climate changes in the past, which will help us understand how these birds may be affected in the future. The team will also investigate how seabirds’ droppings, in turn, affects the global nutrient cycling and climate change.

“We need to understand the past to shape a better future. The new project will reveal the long-term role of seabirds in the ocean ecosystem using my mercury method,” says Chuxian Li.

The project builds on a previous unexpected discovery in which Chuxian Li was able to show how populations of nesting seabirds have fluctuated on a sub-Antarctic island over 8,000 years. To map the nesting history on the island, she developed an innovative method: analysing the mercury content at different depths in a valley peatland below the slopes where the birds nest. (link to previous press release)

Chuxian Li is an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessments at SLU in Uppsala. She obtained her PhD in late 2019 at the University of Toulouse, France, focusing on the cycling of atmospheric dust and mercury in the Southern Ocean. Later, she did postdoc research at SLU, Umeå, and at the University of Bern. She joined SLU Uppsala in January 2025.

The European Research Council's starting grants are awarded to Europe's most promising researchers. The basic idea is to give them the opportunity to build a research group, conduct excellent research and establish themselves as research leaders in Europe. About nine percent of this year's 4,807 applications receive grants, including 22 at Swedish universities. Chuxian Li is the tenth SLU researcher to receive a starting grant from the ERC.

Press release from the ERC