| Summary: | Progress Code: completed Statement: See the child records for further information. This is a parent metadata record for work carried out as part of ASAC/AAS project 40. See the child metadata records for further information. More than 95% of the biomass in the Southern Ocean is microscopic - single celled plants, animals, bacteria and viruses. We are studying the factors that control their distribution and abundance - oceanographic and seasonal conditions, their physiology, and grazing - in order to model their vital roles as food for other organisms and their influence in moderating global climate change through absorption of CO2 and production of DMS. We are also addressing the changes expected in microbial communities through effects of climate change - global warming, sea ice retreat, ocean acidification and enhanced ultraviolet radiation. This project aims to determine the role of microorganisms in the Southern Ocean. The major objectives are to: * Identify and quantify key protistan components of the Southern Ocean ecosystem and study their autoecology. * Identify environmental and ecological processes that control abundance of key microbial components. * Determine interactions between key microbial components to quantify major pathways of carbon flow. * Determine the activity and viability of bacterioplankton and protists in the Southern Ocean. * Distinguish different microbial communities by identifying key taxa and associations so that processes such as primary production, respiration, grazing and particle flux can be readily parameterised in ecological models. * Determine the effect of elevated CO2 concentrations on microbial populations and processes. Taken from the 2008-2009 Progress Report: Progress against objectives: 1. Ongoing sampling from Astrolabe has continued, with 3 return voyages being sampled for phytoplankton species, chlorophyll a and other pigments, coccolithophorid counts and DNA profiles, in conjunction with measurements of CO2, ocean structure, fluorescence and ocean colour by ...
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