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

该奖项由 2009 年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法 111-5）资助。这项研究将测试有关海鸟对白令海和阿留申群岛海洋过程时空变化的反应的假设。该小组将利用三十年来编制的超过一百万条记录的数据集，分析（1）海鸟占据不同海洋领域的季节性模式，（2）每年到十年时间尺度上海洋栖息地中海鸟物种分布模式的稳定性，以及（3）每年到十年时间尺度上不同海洋区域内海鸟丰度的时间模式。该方法将允许测试先前假设的重要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可用。研究人员将利用同时获得的物理和生物数据（如果有）寻求对海鸟分布和丰度观察到的模式的机械解释。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 NOAA 底拖网和声学调查确定的饲料物种的分布和丰度信息。这些对海上海鸟与海洋条件相关的评估将为海鸟中上层研究作为海洋条件指标的效用提供广泛的评估。这项研究是第一项研究 30 年来海鸟的海上分布和丰度的研究。预计它将展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陆架浮游动物和饲料鱼的分布和丰度变化。这将是第一项高纬度研究，旨在测试食鱼性和食浮游生物（以及潜水与水面觅食）海鸟物种对生态系统变化的反应可能有何不同。

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.