Microbes to Megafauna Modelling of Arctic Seas (MiMeMo)

海洋生态系统正受到一系列人类活动和气候变化的压力，需要制定更综合的计划，以可持续的方式最大限度地发挥其对社会的价值。这些压力在极地地区达到顶峰，特别是北极，那里海冰覆盖范围的逐步减少有充分的证据表明，构成北极海洋食物网的物种几千年来一直适应的环境条件发生了快速、大规模和根本的变化：北极变化的速度现在可能比生命进化的速度更快。我们已经知道，冰盖的缩小正在导致北冰洋初级生产量的增加。然而，这种在食物网基础上增加的产量传播到更高营养水平和极具魅力的大型动物(如鲸鱼、海豹和北极熊)的方式和程度是极其不确定和难以预测的。除了海冰以外，栖息地的其他特征，如海流和海浪、海底地形和沉积物，以及陆地淡水和营养物质的输入，也决定了生产模式和对个别物种的适宜性。在这个项目中，我们将利用数学和计算机科学来预测随着大西洋北极物理环境的变化，从微生物到大型动物的营养物质可能通过海洋食物网流动的情况，预计未来几十年将发生这种变化。这些数学将被纳入计算机模型，这些模型描述了食物链中的生物成分与溶解的、颗粒的、无机的和有机的营养物质之间相互作用的复杂网络。这整个复杂的网络是由到达海面的阳光的季节性波动驱动的，并与风、潮汐和淡水驱动的洋流对海洋环境的物理循环和三维混合相结合，后者在太空中运输食物链的所有组件。为了实现这一点，我们需要总结整个范围内的生物、化学和物理的科学信息，并将其表示在我们的模型中。我们从为温带陆架海开发的两种不同的海洋生态系统工作模型的遗产开始，其中包括我们在该项目中对巴伦支海、弗拉姆海峡和更广泛的大西洋-北极的食物网进行建模所需的大多数基本元素。我们将与所有已经资助的北冰洋变化项目的研究人员合作开发模型，以便最好地代表模拟高纬度生态系统所需的特殊特征，特别是海冰对生态系统的作用。到项目结束时，我们将能够量化气候变化可能影响大西洋北极鱼类和无脊椎动物潜在渔业产量的程度，以及开发这些资源可能需要的权衡，涉及依赖鱼类和无脊椎动物生存的大量具有文化重要性的北极大型动物。

Marine ecosystems are under pressure from a range of human activities as well climate change, and there is a need to develop more integrated plans to maximise their value to society in a sustainable way. These pressures are peaking in the polar regions, especially the Arctic, where the well documented progressive reductions in extent of sea-ice cover represent a rapid, massive and fundamental change in the environmental conditions to which the species which make up Arctic marine food webs have, for millennia, been adapted: it is possible that the pace of change in the Arctic is now more rapid than the pace at which life can evolve. We already know that the shrinking of ice-cover is resulting in increased primary production in the Arctic seas. However, the way and extent to which this increased production at the base of the food web propagates up to the higher trophic levels and charismatic megafauna such as whales, seals and polar bears, is extremely uncertain and hard to predict. Other features of the habitat than sea-ice such as currents and waves, seabed topography and sediments, and land-based freshwater and nutrient inputs, also dictate patterns of production and suitability for individual species.In this project we will employ mathematics and computer science to predict the likely flows of nutrient through the marine food web, from microbes to megafauna, as the physical environment in the Atlantic Arctic changes, as it is expected to do over the coming decades. The mathematics will be incorporated into computer models which describe the complex network of interactions between living components of the food web and the dissolved and particulate, inorganic and organic nutrients. This whole complex web is driven by the seasonal fluctuations in sunlight arriving at the sea surface, and coupled to the physical circulation and three-dimensional mixing of the marine environment by winds, tides and freshwater-driven currents, which transport all the components of the food web around in space. To accomplish this we need to summarize scientific information from across the whole range biology, chemistry and physics and represent it in our models.We start the project with the legacy of two different working models of marine ecosystems developed for temperate shelf seas, which include most of the basic elements that we need to model the food webs in the Barents Sea, Fram Strait, and the wider Atlantic-Arctic in this project. We will be working with researchers in all of the already-funded Changing Arctic Ocean projects to develop the models, so as to best represent the special features that are needed to simulate high-latitude ecosystems, especially the role of sea-ice on the ecology.By the end of the project we will be able to quantify the extent to which climate change may affect the potential fishery yields of fish and invertebrates from the Atlantic Arctic, and also the trade-offs that exploiting these resources may entail with respect to the culturally important abundances of Arctic megafauna which rely on fish and invertebrates for their survival.