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》(公法111-5)资助的。这项研究将检验关于白令海和阿留申群岛海洋过程中海鸟对时空变化的反应的假设。利用30年来汇编的100多万条记录的数据集，该小组将分析(1)不同海洋领域海鸟占有率的季节模式，(2)在年度至十年时间尺度上不同海洋生境中海鸟物种分布模式的稳定性，以及(3)不同海洋区域内海鸟丰度在年度至十年时间尺度上的时间模式。该方法将允许测试以前被假设为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可用。研究人员将利用同时获得的物理和生物数据(如果有)，为观察到的海鸟分布和丰度模式寻求机械解释。这些数据包括1990年代初以来在海鸟调查期间收集的浮游动物分布和丰度的信息、日本训练船奥肖罗丸号进行的监测，以及美国国家海洋和大气局底拖网和声学调查确定的饲料物种的分布和丰度。这些与海洋状况有关的海上海鸟评估将提供对海鸟远洋研究作为海洋状况指标的效用的广泛评估。这项研究是第一次审查30年期间海鸟在海上的分布和丰度。预计它将展示海鸟如何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富程度做出反应。这将是第一项高纬度研究，测试食鱼性和食浮游性(以及潜水和水面觅食)海鸟对生态系统变化的反应可能会有什么不同。

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.