Collaborative SBI Research: Carbon Cycling in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas - Field and Modling Studies

Old Dominion University Research Foundation, Norfolk VA

Investigators

Abstract

The Western Arctic is profoundly influenced by the northward flux of nutrient and organic-rich, low salinity Pacific Ocean water that enters the basin through the Bering Strait and across the Chukchi shelf and slope. This flow, a key component of the global ocean circulation, transports freshwater from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean while also sustaining some of the most productive ecosystems in the world, the Bering and Chukchi Seas. Net transport, sea ice cover and sea surface temperatures are well known to vary greatly over seasonal and interannual time scales, but the experimental, observational, and modeling bases to evaluate the response of Arctic ecosystems to these changes, and to global change in general, are largely lacking. This interdisciplinary project will provide the observational and theoretical framework to evaluate carbon fluxes in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in response to variable environmental forcing. A main goal of this project is to determine the impact of decadal-scale environmental regime shifts in the northern high latitudes on carbon cycling in the western Arctic Ocean. Carbon import from the Bering Sea, local production and transformation, and export from the Chukchi and Beaufort shelves to the basin will be examined. This project will focus on understanding the influence of physical and biological processes on fluxes of carbon and other key elements (e.g. N, O, Si) in the water column and benthos of the shelves and slope, and subsequent exchange with the basin. This project has been integrated with other research programs and related resources in the SBI program. The ultimate goal of this study is to obtain a more complete understanding of shelf-basin exchange processes and biogeochemical cycles, and to establish benchmarks useful for assessing future global change of this sentinel ecosystem.