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，特别是北极达到顶峰，那里的海冰覆盖范围逐渐减少，这是有据可查的，这表明构成北极海洋食物网的物种几千年来所适应的环境条件发生了迅速、大规模和根本性的变化：北极变化的速度现在可能比生命进化的速度还要快。我们已经知道，冰盖的缩小正在导致北极海洋初级生产的增加。然而，这种食物网底层产量增加的方式和程度会传播到更高的营养级和有魅力的巨型动物，如鲸鱼、海豹和北极熊，这是极不确定的，很难预测。除了海冰之外，栖息地的其他特征，如海流和波浪、海底地形和沉积物、陆地淡水和营养物质的输入，也决定了单个物种的生产模式和适宜性。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地区物理环境的变化，从微生物到巨型动物，营养物质通过海洋食物网的可能流动，就像预期在未来几十年里一样。数学将被纳入计算机模型，描述复杂的网络之间的相互作用的生物成分的食物网和溶解和颗粒，无机和有机营养素。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，潮汐和淡水驱动的水流的物理循环和海洋环境的三维混合相结合，这些水流将食物网的所有组成部分带到太空中。为了实现这一目标，我们需要总结整个范围内的生物学、化学和物理学的科学信息，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这个项目，其中包括我们在这个项目中模拟巴伦支海、弗拉姆海峡和更广泛的南极-北极食物网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功能，尤其是海洋的作用，到项目结束时，我们将能够量化气候变化对大西洋鱼类和无脊椎动物潜在渔业产量的影响程度北极地区的生态系统，以及开发这些资源可能需要对依赖鱼类和无脊椎动物生存的北极巨型动物的文化重要性进行权衡。

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.