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

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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.