BEST- Assessment of mesozooplankton population and biomass in the eastern Bering Sea: supplemental request to address a BEST-BSIERP data gap

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Concern about the potential impact of climate change on the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem prompted a study of the species composition, abundance and biomass of the mesozooplankton populations forming the ecosystem and estimation of population trends as part of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST). The PIs have been previously funded to collect and process approximately 260 zooplankton samples from the eastern Bering Sea during each of two cruises per year for the three BEST field seasons, to analyze the data, and to publish the results in peer-reviewed journals. However, during field collection, the need for additional information was identified in order to ensure robust results. In response to these needs, an additional 200 samples per year were collected during the BEST cruises. This award funds the processing of those samples.The entire rational of the BEST ecosystem study is based on the fundamental hypothesis that the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem is changing under the influence of climate. The goal of the BEST 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. Therefore, a central requirement of the research is to collect and process a sufficient number of samples to determine robustly the state of the system during the study, estimate the direction or magnitude of change, if any, to validate or refute hypotheses concerning change, and to adequately validate or parameterize the lower trophic level models generated by other program participants. Processing of the 200 extra samples per year will substantially improve our ability to detect statistically significant changes in zooplankton populations during the BEST program, thus helping to address the above requirements.