NARRAGANSETT – Researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography have been awarded grants totaling $1.1 million from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and the North Pacific Research Board to study global-warming induced changes in northern ecosystems.
S. Bradley Moran, a URI professor of oceanography, and Robert Campbell, an associate marine scientist, will use the money to study the ecosystems of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean.
Their awards – from the NSF Bering Sea Ecosystem Study and the NPRB Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program partnership – are part of $4.2 million in funding that also includes grants to scientists at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, the University of Miami, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Oregon State University, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Moran and Campbell will be examining shifts in the phytoplankton and zooplankton productivity, abundance and species, both in open-water areas of the Bering Sea and in areas where the ice cover is receding.
“The overarching goal … is to improve our understanding of climate-driven ecological changes occurring in one of the world¹s most productive and economically-driven regions,” Moran said.
“Warmer water temperatures in the Bering Sea in spring … could result in an earlier and more rapid seasonal ice retreat, with potentially harmful effects on one of the world¹s richest and most productive fisheries,” Campbell added.
Their research is a key component of a six-year, $50 million effort by the NSF and NPRB to determine how the eastern Bering Sea – between the Aleutian Islands and St.
Lawrence Island, Alaska – is likely to respond to climate change. One of the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth, it supports one of the planet’s largest commercial fisheries.
It also is part of the NSF Shelf Basin Interaction study, which has been been accumulating field data from the Arctic Ocean for nearly a decade.
Moran’s work focuses on the carbon cycle in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent waters. “It is a challenge to construct carbon and biological-physical models in this region because of the accelerating melting of ice, which is affecting the Arctic system in many ways ,” he said. “The whole trophic structure is changing, from the top of the food chain to the bottom.”
Campbell is investigating the impact of various climate-warming scenarios on a particular kind of zooplankton, the genus Calanus, which forms an important link in the Arctic food chain.
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