Description
The study area, Arctic is the region most influenced by ongoing global climate change therefore knowledge how these changes influence marine environment are rapidly needed. The objective of the project is to develop understanding of future tipping points and thresholds for marine production and resource management. The project will provide an assessment of how the Arctic ecosystem will respond to multiple stressors arising from ocean warming and chemistry change caused by ocean acidification. Through the gained knowledge and data sets produced we expect to achieve ability to forecast some of the future ecological and human impacts of climate change. The project is aiming to provide cutting-edge knowledge which will inform general public but also policymakers about the current state of the Arctic environment. Network of partners involved in the project will lead to integration of the institutions and scientist involved in the project. Beside the state of the art knowledge generated by this project the established network will lead to new investigation on topics concerning climate change and biodiversity in the future.
Summary of project results
As a result of global warming Arctic Ocean is one of the most rapidly changing marine system on Earth. The POL-NOR provided an assessment of how the Arctic ecosystem will respond to multiple stressors arising from ocean warming and chemistry change caused by ocean acidification (OA). OA is a decrease in pH in the oceans caused by the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere and is recognized to have negative effects on many groups of marine invertebrates with calcareous skeletons. One of the main goals were (1) what is the rate and regionality of recent past, present and future ocean warming, freshening, productivity and ocean acidification? (2) what is the present biodiversity and distribution of calcifying benthic macrofauna from Atlantic to Arctic waters? (3) Does organism’s skeletal geochemical properties follow recent and present changes in ocean physical and biological properties? The main results of the project indicate that chemical water properties including alkalinity, pH occurring in the area of studied Arctic Ocean do not have impact on distribution of diversity of calcareous fauna. As it seems from currently available results the major factors responsible for fauna with calcareous skeletons are productivity and availability of suitable substrate. Yet analysis of vast dataset gathered during this project is still analysed and we cannot rule out that additional patterns will appear in nearest future. More detailed analysis of particular organisms or group of organisms both at temporal and spatial scale indicated that although biological control is the major force behind chemical and mineralogical structure of the skeleton also environmental parameters (most likely temperature, pH) have also some impact on these. POL-NOR revealed that each Arctic species skeleton has specific chemical and mineralogical composition. This fathers confirm that properties of skeletal structure are highly controlled by biological “programing” of the organisms. POL-NOR results indicate ecologically and economically relevant changes in ecosystem structure may be expected in benthic communities of the Barents region. In addition, these results point to new areas of research that should be investigated for a better understanding of impacts climate change, and particularly changes in ocean carbonate-chemistry. Clearly, many other environmental and ecological factors will determine survival of organisms in a future Barents Sea, but these results hint at both unexpected and potentially significant impacts within the next 50 years.
Summary of bilateral results
Each partner in POL-NOR project added different values and expertise. IO PAN has expertise in biodiversity research and skeletal mineralogy and chemistry analysis. NIVA has expertise in chemical oceanography, modelling and socioeconomics. Akvaplan NIVA again is an expert institution in marine biodiversity research and skeletal geochronology. IP PAS has great expertise in paleo- reconstruction, skeletal mineralogy analysis. All these institutions with their mixed yet highly professional expertise combined enable creation of unique team of scientist. This team was able to combine their knowledge which led to understanding of water column processes and what is happening with organisms and sediments. Such approach would be not possible with one institute involved. While Polish side has access to one ship with combined effort of so many institutions especially Norwegian ones we were able to use more sampling platforms (ship) therefore our efficiency of biological and physical parameters sampling were improved greatly. This also made conclusions of the project much more robust. IO PAN and Akvaplan NIVA combined affords to gathered all the biodiversity data for the study area. Both institution have large archives yet working together made those data much larger and the final result of this work led to much more robust and valuable conclusions. IOPAN and IP PAS was able to produce large data set of calcareous organisms (e.g. molluscs, brachiopoda, echinoderms) skeletal mineralogy and chemical composition. This was done over large spatial scale but also temporal scale. Such data were then combined with IOPAN and Akvaplan NIVA biodiversity distribution data base and then it was combined to match those data with maps of physical properties generated by NIVA