Special Feature: Green Edge
The phytoplankton spring bloom in the Arctic Ocean: past, present and future response to climate variations, and impact on carbon fluxes and the marine food web
The phytoplankton spring bloom that develops around the ice-edge accounts for a large fraction of primary production in the Arctic Ocean and is associated with large energy transfer to higher trophic levels and export of carbon to the bottom. How will these bloom dynamics respond to the major changes ongoing in the Arctic? This Special Feature presents results from the Green Edge expeditions conducted in Baffin Bay on land-fast ice in 2015 and 2016, and onboard the research icebreaker Amundsen in 2016. To address the above question, we documented biodiversity and analyzed the biological, chemical and physical properties of snow, sea ice and the water column, at various scales, during two phytoplankton spring bloom events. We also quantified related carbon fluxes through the food web and towards the ocean bottom, analyzed remote sensing time series, examined past trends using paleoceanography approaches, developed improved coupled physical-biological models and used local knowledge.
University of California Press