Editorial The Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions (SBI) Project: An Overview

• Main Authors: Jacqueline M. Grebmeier, H. Rodger Harvey
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Arctic Basin; Chukchi; Climate change; Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.453.9506; http://arctic.cbl.umces.edu/sbi/web-content/pdf files/SBIDSREditorial.pdf

2An increasing body of research indicates that climate change will significantly impact the physical and biological linkages between the Arctic shelves and adjacent ocean basins. In 1998 the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) responded to the need for a better fundamental information of these linkages through support for an interdisciplinary global change research study, Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions (SBI). Initiated under the Ocean-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions component of NSF’s Arctic System Science Program, the goal was to improve our understanding of the impacts of global change on the physical and biogeochemical connections among the western Arctic shelves, slopes, and deep basins (Grebmeier et al. 1998, 2001, Grebmeier 2003). The SBI project has a focus on water mass and ecosystem modifications, material fluxes and biogeochemical cycles in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas with work extending into the central Arctic basin (Figure 1 a). The SBI field efforts have centered on the outer shelf, shelf break and upper slope, where it is thought that key processes control water mass exchange and biogeochemical cycles, and where rapid and significant responses to climate change are expected to occur. The SBI project is comprised of three phases extending over a 10-year period. Projects in