Most significant contributions:

Prof. Rysgaard has contributed significantly to fundamental understanding how, where, and when settling organic matter is degraded in temperate and arctic sediments. The work includes biogeochemical pathways and the cycling of redox elements in marine sediments and sea ice. New knowledge has been achieved on degradation pathways in various sediments, including those inhabited by bioturbating benthic animals and/or colonized by microalgae/macroalgae. His scientific achievements count initiating and raising funds for comprehensive marine system studies in the Arctic. These studies still continue and comprise several sub-research projects and two long-term monitoring programs in Greenland. They are the most comprehensive decadal studies of carbon and nutrient cycles ever made in the Arctic. His is behind many new discoveries from physical to chemical and biological processes related to sea ice formation and melt and how sea ice affects greenhouse-gas exchange between the atmosphere and ocean. Another road of his achievements relates to ocean-glacier interactions. Some of his recent discoveries is a new heat sources for glacial melt in fjords in contact with the Greenland ice sheet, and that melt water plumes in front of calving marine glaciers greatly affects physical, chemical and biological processes in fjords and coastal waters.