BEST: Assessment of mesozooplankton population and biomass in the eastern Bering Sea for spring and summer of 2008, 2009 and 2010

BEST（白令海生态系统研究）是一项由NSF支持的大型研究工作，其目标是确定和量化气候与生态系统响应之间的机械联系。生态系统通过改变其组成种群的丰度、生物量和物种组成来应对气候强迫的变化。如果没有关于构成食物网基础的低营养级种群的信息，就不可能确定系统的状态，估计变化的方向或幅度，验证或反驳假设，或充分验证或参数化低营养级模型。 为了在BEST期间帮助评估构成东白令海大陆架生态系统的种群的物种组成、丰度和生物量的状况和变化，并估计种群趋势，提供了资金，用于在每年两次航行中的每次航行中从东白令海收集和处理大约260个浮游动物样本，并分析由此产生的数据。

The goal of BEST (Bering Sea Ecosystem Study), a large NSF-supported research effort, is to identify and quantify mechanistic links between climate and the ecosystem response. An ecosystem responds to changes in climate forcing by altering the abundance, biomass and species composition of its constituent populations. Without information on lower trophic level populations forming the base of the food web, it is impossible to determine the state of the system, estimate the direction or magnitude of change, if any, to validate or refute hypotheses or to adequately validate or parameterize lower trophic level models. In order to contribute to the assessment of the state and variability of the species composition, abundance and biomass of the populations forming the ecosystem of the Eastern Bering Sea Shelf during BEST and to estimate population trends, funds are provided to collect and process approximately 260 zooplankton samples from the eastern Bering Sea during each of two cruises per year and to analyze the resultant data.