Benthic communities of the Weddell Sea : Past, present and future

The present thesis tackles different aspects of the past, present and future of high Antarctic benthic communities of the Weddell Sea. It first compares methodological approaches to sample benthos, showing the complementarity of two quantitative techniques. Then reviews knowledge on bentho-pelagic c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pineda Metz, Santiago E. A.
Other Authors: Link, Heike, Richter, Claudio, Sands, Chester
Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
Language:English
Published: Universität Bremen 2019
Subjects:
Southern Ocean
benthic ecology
high-Antarctic
macro- and megafauna
in- and epifauna
zoobenthic dynamics
quantitative sampling
bentho-pelagic coupling
long-term observations
500
500 Science
ddc:500
Antarctic
Weddell Sea
Weddell
Antarc*
Online Access:https://media.suub.uni-bremen.de/handle/elib/1742
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:46-00108578-17
Description
Summary:The present thesis tackles different aspects of the past, present and future of high Antarctic benthic communities of the Weddell Sea. It first compares methodological approaches to sample benthos, showing the complementarity of two quantitative techniques. Then reviews knowledge on bentho-pelagic coupling on Antarctic shelves, showing that bentho-pelagic coupling differs considerably based on local characteristics. This methodological and conceptual knowledge is uses to study the benthic communities in the hard to access Filchner Region (southern Weddell Sea), describing two "novel" communities, and shows the influence of environmental drivers over benthic distribution. The final topic is the temporal dynamics of benthos. For this, a long-term study which considers a unique 26-year time series of benthic data from the southeastern Weddell Sea is used. Here, benthic communities appear severely affected by a decrease of productivity, and increase of scouring potential, especially after the year 2000.

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