Understanding the link between sea ice, ice scour and Antarctic benthic biodiversity - the need for cross-station and international collaboration

Deregibus, Dolores; Quartino, Maria Liliana; Zacher, Katharina; Campana, Gabriela Laura; Barnes, David K.A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9076-7867. 2017 Understanding the link between sea ice, ice scour and Antarctic benthic biodiversity - the need for cross-station and international collaboration. Polar Record, 53 (2). 143-152. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000875

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Abstract/Summary

The western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a hotspot of rapid recent regional ‘climate change’. This has resulted in a 0.4°C rise in sea temperature in the last 50 years, five days of sea ice lost per decade and increased ice scouring in the shallows. The WAP shallows are ideal for studying the biological response to physical change because most known Antarctic species are benthic, physical change occurs mainly in the shallows and most research stations are coastal. Studies at Rothera Station have found increased benthic disturbance with losses of winter sea ice and assemblage-level changes coincident with this ice scouring. Such studies are difficult to scale up as they depend on SCUBA diving – a very spatially limited technique. Here we report attempts to broaden the understanding of benthic ecosystem responses to physical change by replicating the Rothera experimental grids at Carlini Station through collaboration between the UK, Argentina and Germany across Signy, Rothera and Carlini stations. We argue that such collaborations are the way forward towards understanding the big picture of biota responses to physical climate changes at a regional scale.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000875
Programmes:	BAS Programmes > BAS Programmes 2015 > Biodiversity, Evolution and Adaptation
ISSN:	0032-2474
Date made live:	08 Mar 2017 13:28 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/511359

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000875

Programmes:

BAS Programmes > BAS Programmes 2015 > Biodiversity, Evolution and Adaptation

ISSN:

0032-2474

Date made live:

08 Mar 2017 13:28 +0 (UTC)

URI:

https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/511359