Major topics included:
Bottom-up vs. top-down effects on ecosystems
Resilience of feeding habitats and major tropho-dynamic pathways
Behaviour/life-histories/reproduction strategies
Recruitment processes
Coupled processes between physics and biology
Climatic effects on food webs
Mechanisms for large-scale changes
Future directions in operational platforms to reveal food web dynamics
Proceedings of the ECONORTH Symposium
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09670645/56/21-22
Marine Ecosystems Comparison Norway-US (MENU I)
MENU I was a joint undertaking between Norway and the US financed by the Research Council of Norway. It conducted marine ecosystem comparisons based primarily on observational data for the eastern Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and the Norwegian and Barents seas.
Publication: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796611/81
Norwegian ESSAS (N-ESSAS)
The overall goal of NESSAS was to quantify the impact of climate variability on the structure and function of the Barents Sea marine ecosystem in order to predict the ecosystem response to possible future climate change and its possible economic impact.
Comparative Marine Ecosystem Structure and Function: Descriptors and Characteristics
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00796611
Stock Production Modeling Workshop
As part of its Working Group on Modeling Ecosystem Response, ESSAS endorsed the Comparative Analysis of Marine Ecosystem Organization (CAMEO)-sponsored “Stock Production Modeling Workshop” which took place 10-14 May, 2010 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (USA). The goal of the workshop was to use easily available data to compare ecosystems by fitting stock production models from each ecosystem and species functional groups to hopefully see patterns in sustainable ecosystem productivity using the usual comparative contrasts. The ecosystems compared were mainly, but not exclusively, sub-Arctic. They included all the MENU regions as well as the Newfoundland Shelf areas of eastern Canada and western Canadian areas (i.e. Strait of Georgia). This effort continues the research begun under MENU, which was an affiliated ESSAS research program, except that now both eastern and western Canadians are involved (constituting a an official tri-lateral project).
(Timetable for Activity: The initial workshop was held 10-14 May, 2010. A second CAMEO-sponsored workshop took place in the spring of 2011)
Workshop Report
Ongoing Projects
The Iceland Sea Ecosystem (ISE)
The major goal of the Iceland Sea Ecosystem (ISE) project is to identify and evaluate inorganic and organic production processes in the Iceland Sea as a means to obtain a holistic picture of the function of its ecosystem. The second main goal is to measure and link together the processes that determine the life history pattern of the capelin stock in time and space.
http://www.imr.no/essas/files/iceland_sea_ecosysem_science_direct.pdf/en
Japanese ESSAS (J-ESSAS)
The overall goal of J-ESSAS is to quantify the impact of climate variability on the structure and function of the Oyashio marine ecosystem in order to predict the ecosystem response to possible future climate change and its possible economic impact. J-ESSAS has 5 year funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Japanese Environment Agency.
Marine Ecosystems Comparison Norway-US (MENU II)
MENU II extends comparative studies conducted under MENU 1 (above) by using several different ecosystem models and expanding the geographic coverage to include the Northern California Current, Southern New England, and the Middle Atlantic Bight in the US and the North Sea off Norway.
http://www.forskningsradet.no/servlet/Satellite?c=Prosjekt&cid=1235738768692&pagename=havkyst/Hovedsidemal&p=1226994156419
The Bering Sea Project
Bering Sea Ecosystem Studies -Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BEST-BSIERP)
The BEST-BSIERP Bering Sea Project is a six-year study of the Bering Sea ecosystem, from the benthos and the atmosphere to human communities, and everything in between. The aim of BEST-BSIERP is to understand and predict consequences of climate change for Bering Sea marine ecosystems. It incorporates end to end studies of Bering Sea ecosystems including climate, physics, primary production, zooplankton, fish, seabirds, marine mammals and people. BEST is closely associated with the human dimensions program in the Bering on climate change and will form part of the US International Polar Year (IPY) program.
Response of Trophic Relationships to Climate Change in sub-Arctic Seas (TROPHARCT)
TROPHARCT is an international project ― involving scientists from Norway, Canada, Russia, USA and France ― that has the explicit aim to initiate comparative analyses of how climate variability and change affects spatial and temporal match-mismatch relationships in sub-Arctic marine ecosystems. The work is being carried out in several steps: 1) the first step is to convene a workshop on the effects of climate variability and change on the temporal and spatial synchrony of predators and prey in marine ecosystems where will be discussed the use of a comparative approach applied to three Sub-Arctic marine ecosystems ―the Barents Sea, Labrador Sea-Newfoundland, and Bering Sea; 2) the second step is to carry out during the next 1-2 years the analyses isolated during the workshop; 3) the third step will involve a second workshop during 2010 where papers will present results of analyses, and later published.
(Timetable for Activity: November.2009 ― December 2012)
Barents Sea Ecosystem Resilience under Global Environmental Change (BarEcoRe)
The objective of the BarEcoRe project is to evaluate the effects of global environmental change on the future structure and resilience of the Barents Sea ecosystem. This will be studied by investigating the effects of past changes in climate and fisheries on the Barents Sea ecosystem, by developing indicators of ecosystem resilience, diversity and structure, and by forecasting the possible future states of the Barents Sea ecosystem under particular environmental and fisheries scenarios. The BarEcoRe project is structured in four work packages respectively dealing with the implications of global warming and fisheries for community structure and regime shifts (WP1), trophic interactions (WP2), future distributions of fish populations (WP3), and past and future ecosystem resilience (WP4).
The key questions addressed by the project are:
- What are the key characteristics of past temporal and spatial variations in fish and benthos communities and how are these related to past climate variability and fishing pressure?
- How does climate variability and change propagate through the Barents Sea ecosystem and influences species interactions?
- How can the combined effects of fisheries and climate modify the spatial distribution of plankton, benthos and fish species in the Barents Sea?
- What determines vulnerability or resilience of the Barents Sea ecosystem and how will these be affected by possible future changes in climate and fisheries regimes?
- Can we detect early warning signals and can we evaluate management strategies with regards to ecosystem resilience?
http://www.imr.no/forskning/prosjekter/barecore/en
(Timetable for Activity: 01.June.2010 ― 31.May.2013)
Workshop on Basin-wide Impact of Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation
This workshop was convened to assemble all relevant information on physical and biological processes related to Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) dynamics and to investigate whether AMO dynamics can be predicted. More specifically the workshop:
- Examined how the climate variability throughout the Atlantic relates to decadal-scale changes like the AMO index, and how such phenomena link to more local hydrographic features as a function of latitude and depth; the position of the north wall of the Gulf Stream; the contraction and expansion of the subpolar gyre; the northward path of the Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW);
- Investigated the mechanistic hypotheses responsible for Atlantic multi-decadal climate variability, including changes in current systems in the North Atlantic such as the Meridional Overturning Circulation;
- Related recently observed changes in distribution, abundance and tropho-dynamics of plankton and higher trophic levels, especially fish populations, to the recent increase in the AMO index;
- Investigated how impacts vary with climate periodicity, particularly the difference in impacts on interannual climate variability compared to multi-decadal variability;
- Analyzed historical records of changes in species assemblages during previous positive (1950s and 1890s) and negative (1910s and 1970s) AMO periods and provide documentation for similar multidecadal variability in past centuries by paleo data, other kinds of proxy data, or historical descriptions
- Investigated if the AMO, or associated features can be predicted, using global climate models.
It is expected that this study of impacts of multidecadal climate variability will contribute to understand and predict impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and fish stocks. Workshop results will allow better understanding of climate impacts on multi-decadal fluctuations in marine communities. In addition, it is expected that the study of impacts of multidecadal climate variability will contribute to improved predictions on the impacts of future climate change on marine ecosystems and fish stocks.
(Timetable for Activity: June 6 —10, 2011 / discussions are ongoing about publications)
