Bering Sea Retrospective: seabirds as indicators of spatial variability and temporal change

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。这项研究将测试有关白令海和阿留申群岛海洋过程中海洋鸟类时空变化的响应假设。利用30年来收集的100多万条记录的数据集，该小组将分析（1）海鸟在各海洋区域的季节性分布模式，（2）在年度至十年时间尺度上海鸟物种在海洋生境中的分布模式的稳定性，以及（3）在年度至十年时间尺度上不同海洋区域内海鸟丰度的时间模式。这一方法将允许测试以前假设重要的分布和丰度模式的时间稳定性，但最初只有一到三年的数据。研究人员将利用同时获得的物理和生物数据，在现有的情况下，对观察到的海鸟分布和丰度模式进行机械解释。这些数据包括自1990年代初以来海鸟调查期间收集的浮游动物分布和丰度信息、日本训练船Oshoro Maru进行的监测以及海洋和大气管理局底拖网和声学调查确定的饲料物种分布和丰度。这些关于海鸟在海上与海洋条件的关系的评价将广泛评价对海鸟的中上层研究作为海洋条件指标的效用，这项研究是第一次审查30多年来海鸟在海上的分布和数量。预计它将显示海鸟如何应对气候驱动的水文条件变化以及白令海东南部大陆架浮游动物和饲料鱼的分布和丰度。这将是第一个高纬度研究，以测试如何食鱼和食鱼（潜水与表面觅食）海鸟物种对生态系统变化的反应可能不同。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This study will test hypotheses about the responses of marine birds to spatial and temporal variability in ocean processes in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. Using a data set of over a million records compiled over thirty years, this group will analyze (1) seasonal patterns of seabird occupancy of various ocean domains, (2) the stability of distributional patterns of seabird species among oceanographic habitats at annual to decadal time scales and (3) temporal patterns in seabird abundance within different ocean regions over annual to decadal time-scales. The approach will permit testing the temporal stability of patterns in distribution and abundance previously hypothesized to be important, but for which initially only one to three years of data were available. The researchers will seek mechanistic explanations for the patterns observed in seabird distribution and abundance using concurrently-obtained physical and biological data, where available. These data include information on zooplankton distribution and abundance collected during seabird surveys since the early 1990s, monitoring conducted by the Japanese training ship Oshoro Maru, and the distribution and abundance of forage species as determined by the NOAA bottom trawl and acoustic surveys. These evaluations of seabirds-at-sea in relation to ocean conditions will provide a broad evaluation of the utility of pelagic studies of seabirds as indicators of ocean conditions.This study is the first to examine the at-sea distribution and abundance of seabirds over a 30+ year period. It is expected to show how seabirds have responded to climate-driven changes in hydrographic conditions and in the distribution and abundance of zooplankton and forage fish over the southeastern Bering Sea shelf. It will be the first high-latitude study to test how the responses of piscivorous and planktivorous (and diving vs. surface-foraging) seabird species to ecosystem change may differ.