Carbon cycling in the northern Barents Sea ecosystem (CABANERA)

Changing climatic conditions are expected to alter the dominant energetic and carbon pathways in the shelf seas fringing the Polar Ocean with ramifications for atmospheric CO2-exchange, fisheries and wildlife. We use a multi-disciplinary approach with focus on the northern marginal ice zone (MIZ) of the Barents Sea and the northern Svalbard Archipelago to investigate how primary production, the biological and chemical carbon pump, and pelagic-benthic coupling are regulated by climate change.

We apply and combine a wide range of methods and tools and simultaneous examination of different environmental compartments (pelagic, sympagic, benthic) and their zones of interface (variable ice cover, PAR, vertical mixing and stratification). A 3D physical-biological coupled model is further developed and applied in order to predict how climate change will modulate the role of the MIZ in the future.

Financed by the Norwegian Research Council: Project #155936-700 to the University of Tromsø, “Carbon flux and ecosystem feed back in the northern Barents Sea in an era of climate change.”

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