Macrobenthic biodiversity response to climate warming driven environmental change in the Arctic deep-sea (HAUSGARTEN, Greenland Sea 79°N)

Large-scale simulations of global climate predicts continuous increase in air and water temperature, leading to further reduction in ice-cover in Arctic. Monitoring of natural, temporal variability of characteristics of deep sea ecosystems in that climate change sensitive area, are crucial for captu...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gorska, Barbara, Soltwedel, Thomas, Wlodarska-Kowalczuk, Maria
Format: Conference Object
Language:unknown
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Arctic
Arctic Ocean
Greenland
Climate change
Greenland Sea
North Atlantic
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/54067/
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.77bd4ab1-737b-4b3a-b91e-044495bb582e
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Summary:Large-scale simulations of global climate predicts continuous increase in air and water temperature, leading to further reduction in ice-cover in Arctic. Monitoring of natural, temporal variability of characteristics of deep sea ecosystems in that climate change sensitive area, are crucial for capture of the moment and the nature of the biological response to changes in environmental regimes. Research was localized in HAUSGARTEN area, where the long-term interdisciplinary monitoring program of structures and functions of deep sea ecosystem in Arctic was established by Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremenhaven (AWI, Germany). HAUSGARTEN is located on the border between the Arctic Ocean and the northern North Atlantic in the region of marginal ice zone - an area very sensitive to possible effects of the global climate change. Between years 2004 and 2008, the anomalously warm surface waters (with temperatures >3°C), called Warm Water Anomaly (WWA), occurred in the central HAUSGARTEN area. It had a significant influence on the whole marine ecosystem – from pelagic zone to the deep sea bottom. We aimed to explore the response of macrobenthic communities to environmental change in HAUSGARTEN region. The study is based on samples collected before (2000) and after the WWA (2010, 2017). Macrofauna samples were collected from board of r/v “Polarstern”, at stations located along the bathymetric gradient from shelf to abyssal plain (230-5561m). Macrofauna species composition and diversity has been compared among the three sampling years to explore if and how it responded to the climate warming driven environmental change.

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