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Relationships between primary production and vertical particle export at the Atlantic-Arctic boundary (Fram Strait, HAUSGARTEN)

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Abstract

The lack of extended dataset has so far prevented an inclusive understanding of the long-term relationships between primary production (PP) and vertical export in the Arctic Ocean. It is urgent to investigate these connections as Arctic ecosystems are on the verge of climate-related shifts, which could be caused by the combined effects of increase in Pacific and Atlantic inflow, climate warming, and sea ice decline. For a period of 6 years we investigated the degree of coupling between PP and export by making use of modelled PP rates and vertical particle fluxes collected with sediment traps moored at ~300 m depth in the eastern Fram Strait. Our analyses indicate that total and new simulated PP averaged for different areas centered on the mooring location (5–200 km radius) explain at best 20–44% of the observed biogenic particle fluxes at 300 m, when applying extended time-lags (55–90 days) between PP and vertical fluxes. Based on this phasing, we define a conceptual framework that presents the temporal dimension as a prime determinant of the maximum strength of the PP-export coupling at a given depth. Our results support that planktonic food webs in the Fram Strait process heavily biogenic material in the epipelagic zone, but we further suggest that Atlantic-Arctic water interactions induce a particular ecological setting responsible for the extended turn-over. In conclusion, we hypothesize that global warming could promote a transition toward a more retentive ecosystem in the Fram Strait region despite the likely increase of pelagic PP in the Arctic Ocean.

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Acknowledgments

We express high gratitude to the Arctic deep-sea HAUSGARTEN observatory team for sharing part of their long-term dataset in order to conduct this work. We thank J. Rodrigues and I. Ellingsen for providing the measured ice cover data. We gratefully thank the guest editor Dr. S. Agustí and three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and suggestions that strengthened and greatly improved the initial manuscript. AF benefited from a postdoctoral scholarship from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT). This work is a contribution to the KONGHAU project financially supported by Statoil Hydro and initiated trough a scientific collaboration between the Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany) and the ARCTOS network (Norway). KONGHAU is linked to the activities of the HERMES program (Hotspot Ecosystem Research on the Margins of European Seas) funded by the European Commission’s Framework Six Programme, under the priority Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics, University of Tromsø, 9037, Tromsø, Norway

    Alexandre Forest & Paul Wassmann

  2. Marine Technology, SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, 7465, Trondheim, Norway

    Dag Slagstad

  3. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, 27570, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Eduard Bauerfeind, Eva-Maria Nöthig & Michael Klages

  4. Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Eau Terre Environnement, G1K 9A9, Quebec, QC, Canada

    Alexandre Forest

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  1. Alexandre Forest
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  2. Paul Wassmann
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  3. Dag Slagstad
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  4. Eduard Bauerfeind
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  5. Eva-Maria Nöthig
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  6. Michael Klages
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Correspondence to Alexandre Forest.

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This article belongs to the special issue: impacts of climate warming on marine and freshwater polar ecosystems, coordinated by S. Agusti, M. Sejr, and C. M. Duarte.

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Forest, A., Wassmann, P., Slagstad, D. et al. Relationships between primary production and vertical particle export at the Atlantic-Arctic boundary (Fram Strait, HAUSGARTEN). Polar Biol 33, 1733–1746 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-010-0855-3

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