ALBERT

Description: The Fram Strait between Greenland and Spitsbergen is the only deep-water connection between the Arctic Ocean and its surrounding water bodies. Here, the WSC (West Spitsbergen Current) transports warm Atlantic Water into the Arctic, which accounts for a major part of the warming trend measured there in the past. The northern part of the Fram Strait is strongly influenced by the MIZ (Marginal Ice Zone), which causes a stratification of the water column that retains nutrients at the surface. These sustain intense algal blooms, leading to high abundances of zooplankton, linking the primary production and higher trophic levels. Changes in the position of the MIZ and the timing of the algae blooms might affect the zooplankton community and thus the entire Arctic food chain. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the ice edge on the zooplankton community in the Fram Strait. Zooplankton samples were taken at the northern (ice influenced) stations N4/5 and the southern (ice-free) station S3 of the Long-Term Ecological Research Observatory HAUSGARTEN established by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in the Fram Strait in 1999. MultiNet samples of both stations were collected in 6 years. For 2015, 2017 and 2018, samples covered a depth of 1,000 m with 4 depth intervals (0-50-200-500-1,000 m). Additionally, surface samples (0-50 m) from 2011, 2012 and 2016 were added to the analysis. CTD data and ice parameters were included to test for correlations between species occurrences and the shifting ice edge. It was hypothesized 1) that the plankton community differs between the northern stations N4/5 and the southern station S3, 2) that these differences are caused by the influence of the ice edge and 3) that interannual differences are stronger at N4/5 due to the shifting ice edge. Furthermore, the zooplankton camera LOKI (Lightframe On-sight Key species Investigation) was deployed at S3 in 2017. This approach offers continuous abundance data combined with simultaneously measured environmental parameters and thus allows a closer insight into small-scale zooplankton distributions. Here, it is hypothesized 4) that the results of the LOKI and the MultiNet will differ regarding zooplankton abundance and community composition. An ANOSIM revealed sampling depth to be the only significant factor for differences between samples. Year and location both tested insignificant. While the northern station showed a higher interannual variability of environmental parameters than the southern station, this was not reflected in the zooplankton communities. It is likely that the WSC which transports Atlantic species northwards is the major factor determining the community composition while the influence of the ice edge is minor. Abundances ranged from 4,500 ind.m-3 at the surface level (0-50 m) at N5 in 2015 to almost 14,000 ind.m-3 at the surface at N4 in 2018, with copepods being the most abundant taxon in all samples. While overall abundances were higher at the surface, the number of taxa increased with depth. In general, there was no trend with time or location. However, in 2017 and 2018 large blooms of the appendicularian Fritillaria sp. were found, especially at the northern station. These might be an indicator of warmer temperatures and an increasing borealization of the Arctic. The LOKI and MultiNet hauls compared at station S3 in 2017 showed differences regarding species abundances, with the LOKI often recording only a fraction of what was found in the MultiNet data. This disparity was mostly accounted for by copepods of the genus Oithona, whose translucent bodies were not well captured by the LOKI. On the other hand, the high vertical resolution of the LOKI allowed to detect a close correlation of Metridia longa to Atlantic Water and a niche separation of developmental stages of M. longa with only females and CV performing a diel vertical migration. These results, while not finding a statistically significant difference between the northern stations N4/5 and the southern station S3, illustrate the importance of time series stations in indicator regions such as the Fram Strait in order to monitor climate change processes.

Description: In this master thesis, Raman Lidar data from Ny-Å?lesund, Spitsbergen have beenanalysed for January to April 2019. Optical parameters (the aerosol backscatter at532 nm, the depolarisation ratio at 532 nm, the color ratio and the Lidar ratio at 355nm) and their typical values have been presented per height interval and per month,as well as the differences between those. Also, the links between the different opticalparameters have been investigated and those values were compared with values ofMarch 2018. March 2019 showed lower backscatter and higher depolarisation ratios,indicating fewer and more spherical particles as in March 2018. For January the 28thand February the 06th, hygroscopic growth has been determined. Relative humiditydata measured by radiosondes have been investigated for strong gradients andbackscatter data has been plotted against the relative humidity. The parametrizationof the scattering enhancement factor (f(RH) = (1??RH)????) has been used to plotgrowth curves through the backscatter data and optimal values for??have beenfound. For the 28th of January, the calculated??-values ranged from 0.3 to 1.4 andthe most likely value appeared to be 0.64. Growth factors (g(RH)) and??-valueshave been calculated as well based onin situ(PM10-filter) data using the Zdanovskii-Stokes-Robinson relation. The resulting??-values for January the 28th and Februarythe 6th were respectively 0.98 and 0.73. For the 19th of January, a general overviewof the aerosol situation on that day has been presented using different results fromdifferent techniques. Mostly small sized aerosol particles (14〈D〈300 nm) havebeen found for that day and low depolarisation values were measured, indicating thepresence of small, spherical ammonium sulfate species. Further research combiningLidar andin situdata is needed for making more precise and accurate conclusions considering Arctic aerosols.

Description: 〈jats:title〉Abstract〈/jats:title〉〈jats:p〉Natural history collections are leading successful large-scale projects of specimen digitization (images, metadata, DNA barcodes), thereby transforming taxonomy into a big data science. Yet, little effort has been directed towards safeguarding and subsequently mobilizing the considerable amount of original data generated during the process of naming 15,000–20,000 species every year. From the perspective of alpha-taxonomists, we provide a review of the properties and diversity of taxonomic data, assess their volume and use, and establish criteria for optimizing data repositories. We surveyed 4113 alpha-taxonomic studies in representative journals for 2002, 2010, and 2018, and found an increasing yet comparatively limited use of molecular data in species diagnosis and description. In 2018, of the 2661 papers published in specialized taxonomic journals, molecular data were widely used in mycology (94%), regularly in vertebrates (53%), but rarely in botany (15%) and entomology (10%). Images play an important role in taxonomic research on all taxa, with photographs used in >80% and drawings in 58% of the surveyed papers. The use of omics (high-throughput) approaches or 3D documentation is still rare. Improved archiving strategies for metabarcoding consensus reads, genome and transcriptome assemblies, and chemical and metabolomic data could help to mobilize the wealth of high-throughput data for alpha-taxonomy. Because long-term—ideally perpetual—data storage is of particular importance for taxonomy, energy footprint reduction via less storage-demanding formats is a priority if their information content suffices for the purpose of taxonomic studies. Whereas taxonomic assignments are quasifacts for most biological disciplines, they remain hypotheses pertaining to evolutionary relatedness of individuals for alpha-taxonomy. For this reason, an improved reuse of taxonomic data, including machine-learning-based species identification and delimitation pipelines, requires a cyberspecimen approach—linking data via unique specimen identifiers, and thereby making them findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable for taxonomic research. This poses both qualitative challenges to adapt the existing infrastructure of data centers to a specimen-centered concept and quantitative challenges to host and connect an estimated $ \le $2 million images produced per year by alpha-taxonomic studies, plus many millions of images from digitization campaigns. Of the 30,000–40,000 taxonomists globally, many are thought to be nonprofessionals, and capturing the data for online storage and reuse therefore requires low-complexity submission workflows and cost-free repository use. Expert taxonomists are the main stakeholders able to identify and formalize the needs of the discipline; their expertise is needed to implement the envisioned virtual collections of cyberspecimens. [Big data; cyberspecimen; new species; omics; repositories; specimen identifier; taxonomy; taxonomic data.]〈/jats:p〉

Description: TESTThe aim of this study was to contribute to a general understanding of the response of the Antarctic macrobenthos to environmental variability and climate-induced changes. The change in population size of selected macrobenthic organisms was investigated in the Larsen A area east of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2007 and 2011 using ROV-based imaging methods. The results were complemented by data from the Larsen B collected in 2007 to allow a conceptual reconstruction of the environment-driven changes before the period of investigation. Both Larsen areas are characterised by ice-shelf disintegration in 1995 and 2002, respectively, as well as high inter-annual variability in sea-ice cover and oceanographic conditions. In 2007 one ascidian species, Molgula pedunculata, was abundant north and south of the stripe of remaining ice shelf between Larsen A and B. Population densities decreased drastically in the Larsen A between 2007 and 2011, coincident with the decrease in Corella eumyota, another ascidian. Among the ophiuroids, the population of deposit feeders increased, while suspension feeders halved their abundance. Current measurements indicated a northward flow between the Larsen B and Larsen A, suggesting that a major physical forcing on benthic population development comes from the South. The results demonstrate that Antarctic macrobenthic populations can exhibit dramatic population dynamics. Analyses of sea-ice dynamics, salinity, temperature and surprisingly ice-shelf disintegration history, however, did not provide any clear evidence for environmental drivers underlying the apparent changes. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Description: The present study examines the effects of experimentally generated disturbance on bathyal nematode communities at the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) observatory HAUSGARTEN, situated in the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard. In order to understand the complex interactions between the biota and environmental perturbations we deployed a free-falling device (bottom lander) equipped with three rotating fork-like disturber units, able to perturbate the upper sediment layers with different disturbance frequencies at chosen time intervals. During a one-year deployment at 2493 m water depth, disturber unit DI was programmed to rotate every 14 days, DII every 28 days, and DIII every 72 days, resulting in 28, 14, and 7 perturbations, respectively. Sediment sampling following this experimental period was conducted with push-coring devices deployed by the Remotely Operated Vehicle “QUEST 4000” (MARUM, Bremen). These sediment cores were sub-sampled to determine the effect of the sediment perturbations on various sediment parameters (i.e., grain size distribution, chloroplastic pigment concentrations) as well as on benthic nematode communities. A total of 4773 nematodes from 27 families and 81 genera were identified. Nematode densities in the disturbed areas ranged from 617 ind. / 10 cm2 to 1566 ind. / 10 cm2, with a mean density of 1193 ind. / 10 cm2 observed overall in the disturbed sediments. Control sediments contained on average 20% more nematode specimens than were found within the disturbed sediments, with an average density of 1477 ind. / 10 cm2 observed. Nematode evenness (J'), genera richness (EG(51)) and heterogeneity (H′) were not significantly different between the treatments and controls (undisturbed vs disturbance). We found a significant effect of the interaction of disturbance frequency and sediment depth (interaction term Fr x De) on heterogeneity and genera richness, while evenness significantly differed between different sediment depths (De) and within the disturbed sediments between different disturbance frequencies (Fr). Although surface sediments in the three disturbed areas were effectively perturbated, sediment depth still has the most pronounced influence on nematode community attributes, while the experimentally induced disturbance had only a limited impact on nematode diversity and community structure. Although we found the density of some nematode genera was negatively affected by the disturbances, the deep-sea nematode community at HAUSGARTEN was generally characterized by a relatively high diversity and seemed to be largely resilient to the experimental disturbances.

Description: The aim of our study is to analyse physical properties of internal layers of deep ice cores in Greenland (NGRIP and NEEM) and a new ice core record from the East GReenland Ice-core Project (EGRIP) on the North East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). For this purpose, in the first part of this study, we have established the initial chronology for the EGRIP ice core over the Holocene and the late last glacial period. We rely on conductivity patterns and volcanic events determined by means of dielectric profiling (DEP), electrical conductivity measurements (ECM) and tephra records for the synchronization between the EGRIP, NEEM and NGRIP ice cores in Greenland. We have transferred the annual-layer-counted Greenland ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) timescale from the NGRIP core to the EGRIP ice core by means of 373 match points. The second part of this study compares numerically modelled radargrams and the airborne radar measurements (radio-echo sounding) to understand the recorded physical properties of internal layers towards reflection mechanisms. Synthetic modelling of electromagnetic wave propagation has been applied to the EGRIP, NEEM and NGRIP2 ice cores based on the conductivity and permittivity, as measured at 250 kHz by DEP. For the comparison between synthetic and observed data, we have used radio-echo sounding data from AWI’s multichannel ultra-wideband radar around the EGRIP drill site, that were recorded during the 2018 field season, and the CReSIS data from the University of Kansas around the NEEM and NGRIP2 drill sites. The timescales (depth-age relation from first part of our study) have been transferred to the synthetic and observed radargrams by means of sensitivity studies. We have found that conductivity only explains a fraction of the radar signals in Greenland ice sheet and the orientated fabric is widespread and influences the radar data.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Antarctica’s ice shelves play a key role in stabilizing their related ice sheets. The ice shelves of western Dronning Maud Land – including the Ekström, Atka, Jelbart, Fimbul and Vigrid ice shelves – currently buttress a catchment that comprises an ice volume equivalent to 0.95 meters of sea level. Any future increase in ice shelf mass loss, with basal melting likely being the main cause, will inevitably accelerate ice sheet drainage and contribute to global sea level rise. Since basal melting largely depends on ice-ocean interactions, it is crucial to attain reliable and consistent bathymetry models to estimate water and heat exchange beneath these ice shelves. We have constructed bathymetry models for an area of about 63,000 km2 beneath the ice shelves of western Dronning Maud Land by inverting airborne gravity data, tied to radar, seismic, and offshore depth reference points. New high-resolution airborne magnetic data across the ice shelves point to Jurassic intrusions and seaward-dipping reflectors originating from Gondwana breakup; enabling us to consider geological density variations as part of the bathymetry modelling process. Our bathymetric models reveal deep glacial troughs beneath the ice shelves, and sills close to the continental shelf breaks which currently limit the possible entry of Warm Deep Water from the Southern Ocean. The present-day average thermocline depth is comparable to the average depths of saddles along the sills, which present gateways into the sub-ice cavities. This leads us to suggest a high sensitivity for these ice shelves to changes in ocean temperature and especially thermocline depth in the future. Once a significant amount of warm water overtops the sills, the deep troughs will allow for fast access to the grounding line, after which it seems there may be little to stop basal melting from rapidly eroding the ice shelves of western Dronning Maud Land.

Description: Today's fast digital growth made data the most essential tool for scientific progress in Earth Systems Science. Hence, we strive to assemble a modular research infrastructure comprising a collection of tools and services that allow researchers to turn big data into scientific outcomes. Major roadblocks are (i) the increasing number and complexity of research platforms, devices, and sensors, (ii) the heterogeneous project-driven requirements towards, e. g., satellite data, sensor monitoring, quality assessment and control, processing, analysis and visualization, and (iii) the demand for near real time analyses. These requirements have led us to build a generic and cost-effective framework O2A (Observation to Archive) to enable, control, and access the flow of sensor observations to archives and repositories. By establishing O2A within major cooperative projects like MOSES and Digital Earth in the research field Earth and Environment of the German Helmholtz Association, we extend research data management services, computing powers, and skills to connect with the evolving software and storage services for data science. This fully supports the typical scientific workflow from its very beginning to its very end, that is, from data acquisition to final data publication. The key modules of O2A's digital research infrastructure established by AWI to enable Digital Earth Science are implementing the FAIR principles: Sensor Web, to register sensor applications and capture controlled meta data before and alongside any measurement in the field Data ingest, allowing researchers to feed data into storage systems and processing pipelines in a prepared and documented way, at best in controlled NRT data streams Dashboards, allowing researchers to find and access data and share and collaborate among partners Workspace, enabling researchers to access and use data with research software in a cloud-based virtualized infrastructure that allows researchers to analyse massive amounts of data on the spot Archiving and publishing data via repositories and Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)

Description: Recent large-scale fire events in Siberia have drawn increased attention to boreal forest fire history. Boreal forests contain about 25% of all global biomass and act as an enormous carbon storage. Fire events are important ecological disturbances connected to the overarching environmental changes that face the Arctic and Subarctic, like vegetation dynamics, permafrost degradation, changes in soil nutrient cycling and global warming, and act as the dominant driver behind boreal forest’s landscape carbon balance. By looking into past fire regimes we can learn about fire frequency and potential linkages to other environmental factors, e.g. fuel types, reconstructed temperature/humidity or geomorphologic landscape dynamics. Unfortunately, fire history data is still very sparse in large parts of Siberia, a region strongly influenced by climate change. The Global Charcoal Database (www.paleofire.org) lists only a handful of continuous charcoal records for all of Siberia, with only three of those featuring published data from macroscopic charcoal as opposed to microscopic charcoal from pollen slides. We aim to reconstruct the late Holocene fire history using lacustrine sediments of Lake Khamra (SW Yakutia at N 59.99°, E 112.98°). It covers an area of c. 4.6 km² with about 22 m maximum water depth, located within the zone of transition from summer-green and larch-dominated to evergreen boreal forest. We present the first continuous, high-resolution (c. 10 years/sample) macroscopic charcoal record (〉 150 μm) including information on particle size and morphology for the past c. 2200 years. We compare this to complementary information from microscopic charcoal in pollen slides, a pollen and non-pollen palynomorph record as well as μXRF data. This multi-proxy approach adds valuable data about fire activity in the region and allows a comparison of different prevalent fire reconstruction methods. As the first record of its kind from Siberia, it provides a long-term context for current fire activity in central Siberian boreal forests and enables a better understanding of the environmental interactions occurring in the changing subarctic landscape.

Description: During the largest polar expedition in history starting in September 2019, the German research icebreaker Polarstern spends a whole year drifting with the ice through the Arctic Ocean. The MOSAiC expedition takes the closest look ever at the Arctic even throughout the polar winter to gain fundamental insights and most unique on-site data for a better understanding of global climate change. Hundreds of researchers from 20 countries are involved. Scientists will use the in situ gathered data instantaneously in near-real time modus as well as long afterwards all around the globe taking climate research to a completely new level. Hence, proper data management, sampling strategies beforehand, and monitoring actual data flow as well as processing, analysis and sharing of data during and long after the MOSAiC expedition are the most essential tools for scientific gain and progress. To prepare for that challenge we adapted and integrated the research data management framework O2A “Data flow from Observations to Archives” to the needs of the MOSAiC expedition on board Polarstern as well as on land for data storage and access at the Alfred Wegener Institute Computing and Data Center in Bremerhaven, Germany. Our O2A-framework assembles a modular research infrastructure comprising a collection of tools and services. These components allow researchers to register all necessary sensor metadata beforehand linked to automatized data ingestion and to ensure and monitor data flow as well as to process, analyze, and publish data to turn the most valuable and uniquely gained arctic data into scientific outcomes. The framework further allows for the integration of data obtained with discrete sampling devices into the data flow. These requirements have led us to adapt the generic and cost-effective framework O2A to enable, control, and access the flow of sensor observations to archives in a cloud-like infrastructure on board Polarstern and later on to land based repositories for international availability. Major roadblocks of the MOSAiC-O2A data flow framework are (i) the increasing number and complexity of research platforms, devices, and sensors, (ii) the heterogeneous interdisciplinary driven requirements towards, e. g., satellite data, sensor monitoring, in situ sample collection, quality assessment and control, processing, analysis and visualization, and (iii) the demand for near real time analyses on board as well as on land with limited satellite bandwidth. The key modules of O2A's digital research infrastructure established by AWI are implementing the FAIR principles: SENSORWeb, to register sensor applications and sampling devices and capture controlled meta data before and alongside any measurements in the field Data ingest, allowing researchers to feed data into storage systems and processing pipelines in a prepared and documented way, at best in controlled near real-time data streams Dashboards allowing researchers to find and access data and share and collaborate among partners Workspace enabling researchers to access and use data with research software utilizing a cloud-based virtualized infrastructure that allows researchers to analyze massive amounts of data on the spot Archiving and publishing data via repositories and Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)

Description: An ensemble-based data assimilation framework for a coupled ocean–atmosphere model is applied to investigate the influence of assimilating different types of ocean observations on the ocean and atmosphere simulation. The data assimilation is performed with the parallel data assimilation framework (PDAF) for the climate model AWI-CM. Observations of the ocean, namely satellite sea-surface temperature (SST) and temperature and salinity profiles, are assimilated into the ocean component. The atmospheric state is only influenced by the model dynamics. Different assimilation scenarios were carried out with different combinations of observations to investigate to what extent the assimilation into the coupled model leads to a better estimation of the state of the ocean as well as the atmosphere. The influence of the data assimilation is assessed by comparing the ocean prediction with dependent and independent ocean observations. For the atmosphere, the assimilation result is compared with the ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalysis data. The ocean temperature and salinity are improved by all the assimilation scenarios in the coupled system. The assimilation leads to a response of the atmosphere throughout the troposphere and impacts the global atmospheric circulation. Globally the temperature and wind speed are improved in the atmosphere on average.

Description: 〈jats:p〉Abstract. Computation of barotropic and meridional overturning streamfunctions for models formulated on unstructured meshes is commonly preceded by interpolation to a regular mesh. This operation destroys the original conservation, which can be then artificially imposed to make the computation possible. An elementary method is proposed that avoids interpolation and preserves conservation in a strict model sense. The method is described as applied to the discretization of the Finite volumE Sea ice – Ocean Model (FESOM2) on triangular meshes. It, however, is generalizable to colocated vertex-based discretization on triangular meshes and to both triangular and hexagonal C-grid discretizations. 〈/jats:p〉

Description: The prevalence of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria in aquatic environments has been a long withstanding health concern, namely extended-spectrumbeta-lactamase (ESBL) producing Escherichia coli. Given increasing reports on microplastic (MP) pollution in these environments, it has become crucial to better understand the role of MP particles as transport vectors for such multidrug-resistant bacteria. In this study, an incubation experiment was designed where particles of both synthetic and natural material (HDPE, tyre wear, and wood) were sequentially incubated atmultiple sites along a salinity gradient from the Lower Weser estuary (Germany) to the offshore island Helgoland (German Bight, North Sea). Following each incubation period, particle biofilms andwater samples were assessed for ESBL-producing E. coli, first by the enrichment and detection of E. coli using Fluorocult® LMX Broth followed by cultivation on CHROMAgar™ ESBL media to select for ESBLproducers. Results showed that general E. coli populations were present on the surfaces of wood particles across all sites but nonewere found to produce ESBLs. Additionally, neither HDPE nor tyrewear particles were found to harbour any E. coli. Conversely, ESBL-producing E. coli were present in surrounding waters from all sites, 64% of which conferred resistances against up to 3 other antibiotic groups, additional to the beta-lactam resistances intrinsic to ESBL-producers. This study provides a first look into the potential of MP to harbour and transport multidrug-resistant E. coli across different environments and the approach serves as an important precursor to further studies on other potentially harmful MP-colonizing species.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Due to changing temperature regimes in the North- and the Wadden Sea, a fish survey in the Sylt Rømø bight (SRB) was established in 2007 for at least ten years. The aim is to investigate the Wadden Sea fish fauna with special interest in changes of migration behavior, species composition and feeding habits. Seven stations are sampled monthly inside the SRB. Two additional stations, one outside the bight, one close to the Danish border are sampled as references four times a year. For sampling a mini bottom trawl, total length 17 m, trawl opening 7 m, height 3 m with a mesh size of 36 mm in the wings, 16 mm in the mid part and 6 mm in the cod end is used. At every station one haul in the water column and another at the bottom are sampled, for 15 minutes at a speed of approximately 2 knots. The data will help to give a more detailed picture of food chains and energy flows inside the Wadden Sea.

Description: Research vessels equipped with fibreoptic and copper cored coaxial cables support the live onboard inspection of high-bandwidth marine data in real-time. This allows towed still image and video sleds to be equipped with latest generation higher resolution digital camera systems and additional sensors. During RV Polarstern expedition PS118 in February–April 2019, the recently developed Ocean Floor Observation and Bathymetry System (OFOBS) of the Alfred Wegener Institute was used to collect still and video image data from the seafloor at a total of 11 ice covered locations in the northern Weddell Sea and Powell Basin. Still images of 26 megapixel resolution and HD quality video data were recorded throughout each deployment. In addition to downward facing video and still image cameras, OFOBS also mounted sidescan and forward-facing acoustic systems, which facilitated safe deployment in areas of high topographic complexity, such as above the steep flanks of the Powell Basin and the rapidly shallowing, iceberg scoured Nachtigaller Shoal. To localise collected data, the OFOBS system was equipped with a POSIDONIA transponder for Ultra Short Baseline triangulation of OFOBS positions. All images are available from: https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.911904 (Purser et al., 2020).

Description: This document provides a brief overview of the concept of sea-ice thickness sounding using airborne electromagnetic induction, the geophysical parameters sensed by a specific sensor type as well as a technical description of the content and format of the data files containing the unprocessed sensor data. The description of the higher-level geophysical data products is not part of this document and can be found in the scientific literature. Rather, the information here is intended to document the raw sensor data and the general method concept to ensure any use of the raw data in future applications.

Description: The formation of platelet ice is well known to occur under Antarctic sea ice, where subice platelet layers form from supercooled ice shelf water. In the Arctic, however, platelet ice formation has not been extensively observed, and its formation and morphology currently remain enigmatic. Here, we present the first comprehensive, long‐term in situ observations of a decimeter thick subice platelet layer under free‐drifting pack ice of the Central Arctic in winter. Observations carried out with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) during the midwinter leg of the MOSAiC drift expedition provide clear evidence of the growth of platelet ice layers from supercooled water present in the ocean mixed layer. This platelet formation takes place under all ice types present during the surveys. Oceanographic data from autonomous observing platforms lead us to the conclusion that platelet ice formation is a widespread but yet overlooked feature of Arctic winter sea ice growth.

Description: Platelet ice is a unique type of sea ice; its occurrence has numerous implications for physical and ecological systems. Mostly, platelet ice has been reported from the Antarctic where ice crystals grow in supercooled ice shelf water and accumulate below sea ice to form sub-ice platelet layers. In the Arctic however, platelet ice formation has only been sparsely documented so far. The associated formation processes and morphology differ significantly from the Antarctic, but currently remain poorly understood. Here, we present the first comprehensive, repeat in-situ observations of a decimeter thick sub-ice platelet layer under drifting pack ice of the Central Arctic in winter. Observations carried out with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) during the midwinter leg of the MOSAiC drift expedition provided clear evidence of the growth of platelet layers from supercooled water present in the ocean mixed layer. This process was observed under all ice types present during the surveys. Oceanographic data from autonomous observing platforms leads us to the conclusion that platelet ice formation is a widespread yet overlooked feature of Arctic winter sea ice growth.

Description: The circadian clock provides a mechanism for anticipating environmental cycles and is synchronized by temporal cues such as daily light/dark cycle or photoperiod. However, the Arctic environment is characterized by several months of Midnight Sun when the sun is continuously above the horizon and where sea ice further attenuates photoperiod. To test if the oscillations of circadian clock genes remain in synchrony with subtle environmental changes, we sampled the copepod Calanus finmarchicus, a key zooplankter in the north Atlantic, to determine in situ daily circadian clock gene expression near the summer solstice at a southern (74.5° N) sea ice-free and a northern (82.5° N) sea ice-covered station. Results revealed significant oscillation of genes at both stations, indicating the persistence of the clock at this time. While copepods from the southern station showed oscillations in the daily range, those from the northern station exhibited an increase in ultradian oscillations. We suggest that in C. finmarchicus, even small daily changes of solar altitude seem to be sufficient to entrain the circadian clock and propose that at very high latitudes, in under-ice ecosystems, tidal cues may be used as an additional entrainment cue.

Description: 〈jats:title〉Abstract〈/jats:title〉〈jats:p〉In times of accelerating climate change, species are challenged to respond to rapidly shifting environmental settings. Yet, faunal distribution and composition are still scarcely known for remote and little explored seas, where observations are limited in number and mostly refer to local scales. Here, we present the first comprehensive study on Eurasian-Arctic macrobenthos that aims to unravel the relative influence of distinct spatial scales and environmental factors in determining their large-scale distribution and composition patterns. To consider the spatial structure of benthic distribution patterns in response to environmental forcing, we applied Moran’s eigenvector mapping (MEM) on a large dataset of 341 samples from the Barents, Kara and Laptev Seas taken between 1991 and 2014, with a total of 403 macrobenthic taxa (species or genera) that were present in ≥ 10 samples. MEM analysis revealed three spatial scales describing patterns within or beyond single seas (broad: ≥ 400 km, meso: 100–400 km, and small: ≤ 100 km). Each scale is associated with a characteristic benthic fauna and environmental drivers (broad: apparent oxygen utilization and phosphate, meso: distance-to-shoreline and temperature, small: organic carbon flux and distance-to-shoreline). Our results suggest that different environmental factors determine the variation of Eurasian-Arctic benthic community composition within the spatial scales considered and highlight the importance of considering the diverse spatial structure of species communities in marine ecosystems. This multiple-scale approach facilitates an enhanced understanding of the impact of climate-driven environmental changes that is necessary for developing appropriate management strategies for the conservation and sustainable utilization of Arctic marine systems.〈/jats:p〉

Description: The Southern Ocean (SO) accounts for over 40% of anthropogenically derived CO2 uptake. It is the world’s largest High-Nutrient Low-Chlorophyll (HNLC) region and the scarcity of trace metals such as iron (Fe) drives phytoplankton composition and biomass build up. Besides Fe, manganese (Mn) is the second most abundant trace metal since it is present in the thylakoids. As dissolved manganese (dMn) concentrations in the Atlantic sector of the SO are very low (0.04 nM), phytoplankton growth may not only be limited by Fe but also by Mn availability, a theory previously described by Martin et al. (1990). However, mechanistic studies investigating the effects of multiple trace metals limiting or co-limiting on growth and photosynthesis are lacking. This study focuses on the identification of the Fe-Mn co-limitation of natural phytoplankton assemblages to elucidate the impact of different Fe and Mn additions on species composition. To this end, two shipboard Fe-Mn addition bottle incubation experiments were conducted during the ‘RV Polarstern’ expedition PS97 in the Western and Eastern Drake Passage (DP) in 2016. This study highlights the importance of Mn in the otherwise Fe-limited Drake Passage. From microscopy samples, the addition of Fe and Mn together triggered the highest abundance of the genus Fragilariopsis sp. in the Western DP. In the Eastern DP, the picophytoplankton fraction, detected by flow cytometry, reached the highest abundance only when both trace elements were provided, confirmed by highest chlorophyll-a build up. Moreover, the distinct response of Mn depletion relative to the Fe depletion support the findings that Fe and Mn do not substitute to each other. This experimental study highlights that both trace elements act as drivers of the ecology across the Drake Passage.

Description: Increasing air and sea surface temperatures at high latitudes lead to accelerated thaw, destabilization, and erosion of perennially frozen soils (i.e., permafrost), which are often rich in organic carbon. Coastal erosion leads to an increased mobilization of organic carbon into the Arctic Ocean that can be converted into greenhouse gases and may therefore contribute to further warming. Carbon decomposition can be limited if organic matter is efficiently deposited on the seafloor, buried in marine sediments and thus removed from the short-term carbon cycle. Basins, canyons and troughs near the coastline can serve as sediment traps and potentially accommodate large quantities of organic carbon along the Arctic coast. Here we use biomarkers (source-specific molecules), stable carbon isotopes (δ13C) and radiocarbon (Δ14C) to identify the sources of organic carbon in the nearshore zone of the southern Canadian Beaufort Sea. We use an end-member model based on the carbon isotopic composition of bulk organic matter to identify sources of organic carbon. Monte Carlo simulations are applied to quantify the contribution of coastal permafrost erosion to the sedimentary carbon budget. The models suggest that 40% of all carbon released by coastal erosion is efficiently trapped and sequestered in the nearshore zone. We conclude that permafrost coastal erosion releases huge amounts of sediment and organic matter into the nearshore zone. Rapid burial removes large quantities of carbon from the carbon cycle in depositional settings.

Description: The European Arctic is a region of high interest for climate change. Water vapor plays a fundamental role in global warming; therefore, high-quality water vapor monitoring is essential for assimilation in forecast simulations. The seven analyzed instruments on-board satellite platforms are: Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Global Ozone Monitoring Instrument 2 (GOME-2), Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), SCanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Carthography (SCIAMACHY) and Polarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectances (POLDER). The GNSS data from Ny-Ålesund are matched to satellite observations of IWV in a 30-min temporal window, and 100-km radius. Then, statistics and the distribution of satellite-ground differences under different conditions are studied. The correlation coefficient (R2) with ground-based measurements is about 0.7 for all products except OMI (R2=0.5), and MODIS NIR and POLDER (R2=0.3). OMI shows high bias and variability compared to the rest of products. RMSE values are of the order of 3 mm for all satellites, except OMI (7 mm) and POLDER (5 mm). Bias (MBE) is negligible for AIRS, close to +1.6 mm for GOME-2 and MODIS IR, +0.8 mm for MODIS NIR, +5.9 mm for OMI, −2.7 mm for POLDER and −1.2 mm for SCIAMCHY. All satellite products tend to overestimate small IWV values and underestimate large IWV values. Variability also increases with IWV. An underestimation of the satellite products and an increase on the variability is generally observed for large Solar Zenith Angle (SZA) values. Under cloudy conditions, underestimation and variability are increased. Seasonal behavior is driven by the typical cloud cover (CC), SZA, and IWV values. In summer, it is typical to find conditions with large IWV, small SZA and large CC values. Therefore, in summer months satellite products are more biased (either positively or negatively) and with more variability, but in relative terms they are less biased and exhibit less variability.

Description: To evaluate the present sea-ice changes in a longer-term perspective the knowledge of sea-ice variability on pre-industrial and geological time scales is essential. For the interpretation of proxy reconstructions it is necessary to understand the recent signals of different sea-ice proxies from various regions. We present 260 new sediment surface samples collected in the (sub-) Arctic Oceans that were analysed for specific sea-ice (IP25) and open-water phytoplankton biomarkers (brassicasterol, dinosterol, HBI III). This new biomarker dataset was combined with 615 previously published biomarker surface samples into a pan-Arctic database. The resulting pan-Arctic biomarker and sea-ice index (PIP25) database shows a spatial distribution correlating well with the diverse modern sea-ice concentrations. We find correlations of PBIP25, PDIP25 and PIIIIP25 with spring and autumn concentrations. Similar correlations with modern sea-ice concentrations are observed in Baffin Bay. However, the correlations of the PIP25 indices with modern sea-ice concentrations differ in Fram Strait from those of the (sub-) Arctic dataset, which is likely caused by region-specific differences in sea-ice variability, nutrient availability and other environmental conditions. The extended (sea-ice) biomarker database strengthens the validity of biomarker sea-ice reconstructions in different Arctic regions and shows how different sea-ice proxies combined may resolve specific seasonal sea-ice signals.

Description: Measuring environmental variables over longer times in coastal marine environments is a challenge in regard to sensor maintenance and data processing of continuously produced comprehensive datasets. In the project “MOSES” (Modular Observation Solutions for Earth Systems), this procedure became even more complicated because seven large Helmholtz centers from the research field Earth and Environment (E&E) within the framework of the German Ministery of Educatiopn and Research (BMBF) work together to design and construct a large scale monitoring network across earth compartments to study the effects of short-term events on long term environmental trends. This requires the development of robust and standardized automated data acquisition and processing routines, to ensure reliable, accure and precise data. Here, the results of two intercomparison workshops on senor accuracy and precicion for selected environmental variables are presented. Environmental sensors which were to be used in MOSES campaigns on hydrological extremes (floods and draughts) in the Elbe catchment and the adjacent coastal areas in the North Sea in 2019 to 2020 were compared for selected parameters (temperature, salinity, chlorophyll-A, turbidity and methane) in the same experimentally controlled water body, assuming that all sensors provide comparable data. Results were analyzed with respect to individual sensor accuracy and precision related to an “assumed” real value as well as with respect to a cost versus accuracy/precision index for measuring specific environmental data. The results show, that accuracy and precision of sensors do not necessarily correlate with the price of the sensors and that low cost sensors may provide the same or even higher accuracy and precision values as even the highest price sensor types.

Description: No other region has warmed as rapidly in the past decades as the Arctic. Funded by the British Natural Environment Research Council and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the CACOON project investigates how this warming influences Arctic coastal-marine ecosystems. Arctic rivers annually carry around 13% of the globally transported dissolved organic carbon (despite the Arctic Ocean making up only approx. 1% of the Earth's ocean volume). Arctic shelf waters are therefore dominated by terrestrial carbon pools, so that shelf ecosystems are intimately linked to freshwater supplies. Arctic ecosystems also contain permafrost carbon that may be released with warming. Climate change already thaws permafrost, reduces sea-ice and increases riverine discharge, triggering important feedbacks. The importance of the near-shore region, consisting of several tightly connected ecosystems that include rivers, deltas and the shelf, is however often overlooked. Year-round studies are scarce but needed to predict the impact of shifting seasonality, fresher water, changing nutrient supply and greater proportions of permafrost-derived carbon on coastal waters. The aims of the CACOON project are to quantify the effect of changing freshwater export and permafrost thaw on the type and fate of river-borne organic matter (OM) delivered to Arctic shore, and resulting changes on ecosystem functioning in the coastal Arctic Ocean. We are achieving this through a combined observational, experimental and modelling approach. We conduct laboratory experiments to parameterise the susceptibility of terrigenous carbon to abiotic and biotic transformation and losses, then use the results from these to deliver a marine ecosystem model capable of representing major biogeochemical cycles. We apply this model to assess how future changes to freshwater runoff and carbon fluxes alter the ecosystems. To reach these aims we conducted 4 field campaigns in 2019 in the Lena and Kolyma delta region. In the Lena Delta we were using a mobile camp on sledges to collect water samples, ice cores, surface sediments, gas samples as well as CTD profiles. A permafrost cliff (Sobo-Sise) was sampled to analyse terrestrial endmembers of organic matter entering the deltaic and eventually marine system following erosion and transport. During the summer campaign we retrieved samples along a 200 km transect from the centre of the delta to the Laptev Sea covering the fresh-salt water transition. The aim of Kolyma field sampling was to capture the open water season from the ice breakup to re-freezing and sample the Kolyma River and the near shore area. The lab work on these samples is currently ongoing.

Description: Only few naturally occurring cyclic imines have been fully structurally elucidated or synthesized to date. The configuration at the C-4 carbon plays a pivotal role in the neurotoxicity of many of these metabolites, for example, gymnodomines (GYMs) and spirolides (SPXs). However, the stereochemistry at this position is not accessible by nuclear Overhauser effect—nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NOE-NMR) due to unconstrained rotation of the single carbon bond between C-4 and C-5. Consequently, the relative configuration of GYMs and SPXs at C-4 and its role in protein binding remains elusive. Here, we determined the stereochemical configuration at carbon C-4 in the butenolide ring of spirolide- and gymnodimine-phycotoxins by comparison of measured 13C NMR shifts with values obtained in silico using force field, semiempirical and density functional theory methods. This comparison demonstrated that modeled data support S configuration at C-4 for all studied SPXs and GYMs, suggesting a biosynthetically conserved relative configuration at carbon C-4 among these toxins.

Description: Since plastics degrade very slowly, they remain in the environment on much longer timescales than most natural organic substrates and provide a novel habitat for colonization by bacterial communities. The spectrum of relationships between plastics and bacteria, however, is little understood. The first objective of this study was to examine plastics as substrates for communities of Bacteria in estuarine surface waters. We used next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to characterize communities from plastics collected in the field, and over the course of two colonization experiments, from biofilms that developed on plastic (low-density polyethylene, high-density polyethylene, polypropylene, polycarbonate, polystyrene) and glass substrates placed in the environment. Both field sampling and colonization experiments were conducted in estuarine tributaries of the lower Chesapeake Bay. As a second objective, we concomitantly analyzed biofilms on plastic substrates to ascertain the presence and abundance of Vibrio spp. bacteria, then isolated three human pathogens, V. cholerae, V. parahaemolyticus, and V. vulnificus, and determined their antibiotic-resistant profiles. In both components of this study, we compared our results with analyses conducted on paired samples of estuarine water. This research adds to a nascent literature that suggests environmental factors govern the development of bacterial communities on plastics, more so than the characteristics of the plastic substrates themselves. In addition, this study is the first to culture three pathogenic vibrios from plastics in estuaries, reinforcing and expanding upon earlier reports of plastic pollution as a habitat for Vibrio species. The antibiotic resistance detected among the isolates, coupled with the longevity of plastics in the aqueous environment, suggests biofilms on plastics have potential to persist and serve as focal points of potential pathogens and horizontal gene transfer.

Description: Ocean models at eddy-permitting resolution are generally overdissipative, damping the intensity of the mesoscale eddy field. To reduce overdissipation, we propose a simplified, kinematic energy backscatter parametrization built into the viscosity operator in conjunction with a new flow-dependent coefficient of viscosity based on nearest neighbor velocity differences. The new scheme mitigates excessive dissipation of energy and improves global ocean simulations at eddy-permitting resolution. We find that kinematic backscatter substantially raises simulated eddy kinetic energy, similar to an alternative, previously proposed dynamic backscatter parametrization. While dynamic backscatter is scale aware and energetically more consistent, its implementation is more complex. Furthermore, it turns out to be computationally more expensive, as it applies, among other things, an additional prognostic subgrid energy equation. The kinematic backscatter proposed here, by contrast, comes at no additional computational cost, following the principle of simplicity. Our primary focus is the discretization on triangular unstructured meshes with cell placement of velocities (an analog of B-grids), as employed by the Finite-volumE Sea ice-Ocean Model (FESOM2). The kinematic backscatter scheme with the new viscosity coefficient is implemented in FESOM2 and tested in the simplified geometry of a zonally reentrant channel as well as in a global ocean simulation on a 1/4° mesh. This first version of the new kinematic backscatter needs to be tuned to the specific resolution regime of the simulation. However, the tuning relies on a single parameter, emphasizing the overall practicality of the approach.

Description: 〈jats:title〉Abstract〈/jats:title〉〈jats:p〉 〈jats:list〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Social–ecological systems (SES) exhibit complex cause‐and‐effect relationships. Capturing, interpreting, and responding to signals that indicate changes in ecosystems is key for sustainable management in SES. Breaks in this signal–response chain, when feedbacks are missing, will allow change to continue until a point when abrupt ecological surprises may occur.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉In these situations, societies and local ecosystems can often become uncoupled. In this paper, we demonstrate how the red loop–green loop (RL–GL) concept can be used to uncover missing feedbacks and to better understand past social–ecological dynamics. Reinstating these feedbacks in order to recouple the SES may ultimately create more sustainable systems on local scales.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉The RL–GL concept can uncover missing feedbacks through the characterization of SES dynamics along a spectrum of human resource dependence. Drawing on diverse qualitative and quantitative data sources, we classify SES dynamics throughout the history of Jamaican coral reefs along the RL–GL spectrum. We uncover missing feedbacks in red‐loop and red‐trap scenarios from around the year 600 until now. The Jamaican coral reef SES dynamics have moved between all four dynamic states described in the RL–GL concept: green loop, green trap, red loop and red trap.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉We then propose mechanisms to guide the current unsustainable red traps back to more sustainable green loops, involving mechanisms of seafood trade and ecological monitoring. By gradually moving away from seafood exports, Jamaica may be able to return to green‐loop dynamics between the local society and their locally sourced seafood. We discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of this proposed intervention and give indications of why an export ban may insure against future missing feedbacks and could prolong the sustainability of the Jamaican coral reef ecosystem.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Our approach demonstrates how the RL–GL approach can uncover missing feedbacks in a coral reef SES, a way the concept has not been used before. We advocate for how the RL–GL concept in a feedback setting can be used to synthesize various types of data and to gain an understanding of past, present and future sustainability that can be applied in diverse social–ecological settings.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈/jats:list〉 〈/jats:p〉〈jats:p〉A free 〈jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10092/suppinfo"〉Plain Language Summary〈/jats:ext-link〉 can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.〈/jats:p〉

Description: 〈jats:title〉Abstract〈/jats:title〉〈jats:p〉 〈jats:list〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Herbivory is a key process on coral reefs, which, through grazing of algae, can help sustain coral‐dominated states on frequently disturbed reefs and reverse macroalgal regime shifts on degraded ones.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Our understanding of herbivory on reefs is largely founded on feeding observations at small spatial scales, yet the biomass and structure of herbivore populations is more closely linked to processes which can be highly variable across large areas, such as benthic habitat turnover and fishing pressure. Though our understanding of spatiotemporal variation in grazer biomass is well developed, equivalent macroscale approaches to understanding bottom‐up and top‐down controls on herbivory are lacking.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Here, we integrate underwater survey data of fish abundances from four Indo‐Pacific island regions with herbivore feeding observations to estimate grazing rates for two herbivore functions, cropping (which controls turf algae) and scraping (which promotes coral settlement by clearing benthic substrate), for 72 coral reefs. By including a range of reef states, from coral to algal dominance and heavily fished to remote wilderness areas, we evaluate the influences of benthic habitat and fishing on the grazing rates of fish assemblages.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Cropping rates were primarily influenced by benthic condition, with cropping maximized on structurally complex reefs with high substratum availability and low macroalgal cover. Fishing was the primary driver of scraping function, with scraping rates depleted at most reefs relative to remote, unfished reefs, though scraping did increase with substratum availability and structural complexity.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Ultimately, benthic and fishing conditions influenced herbivore functioning through their effect on grazer biomass, which was tightly correlated to grazing rates. For a given level of biomass, we show that grazing rates are higher on reefs dominated by small‐bodied fishes, suggesting that grazing pressure is greatest when grazer size structure is truncated.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈jats:list-item〉〈jats:p〉Stressors which cause coral declines and clear substrate for turf algae will likely stimulate increases in cropping rates, in both fished and protected areas. In contrast, scraping functions are already impaired at reefs inhabited by people, particularly where structural complexity has collapsed, indicating that restoration of these key processes will require scraper biomass to be rebuilt towards wilderness levels.〈/jats:p〉〈/jats:list-item〉 〈/jats:list〉 〈/jats:p〉〈jats:p〉A free 〈jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13457/suppinfo"〉Plain Language Summary〈/jats:ext-link〉 can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.〈/jats:p〉

Description: Timonius eremiticus, a new species from Mount Pulgar, Palawan Island, the Philippines, is here described \nand illustrated. It is morphologically close to T. flavescens but is characterized by membranous to chartaceous \nleaves with 2\xe2\x80\x934 pairs of lateral nerves, ivory-white corolla, bracteate staminate inflorescences bearing bracteolate \nflowers, 5-petaled pistillate flowers, (sub)globose fruits that are round and not 4-angled, and pyrenes being obliquely \nradiated in cross-section of fruits. Timonius eremiticus is assessed as Critically Endangered following IUCN criteria. \n \nBuod (Wikang Filipino)\xe2\x80\xaf\xe2\x80\xaf\xe2\x80\xafInilarawan at iginuhit sa lathalaing ito ang Timonius eremiticus na isang bagong espesye \nng halaman na matatagapuan sa Bundok Pulgar sa pulo ng Palawan sa Pilipinas. Ito ay kawangis ng T. flavescens \nsubalit natatangi dahil sa mga malalamad o malapapel nitong mga dahon na may dalawa o hanggang apat na \npares ng nerbiyong lateral, kulay garing na mga talulot, brakteadong istaminate na mga inflorescence at bulaklak, \nmga pistiladong bulaklak na may limang talulot, (mala)bilugang mga bunga na hindi nakalundo sa apat, at mga \npyrene na oblikong naka-radiate sa pahalang na hati ng mga bunga. Ang Timonius eremiticus ay itinataya rin na \nlubos nang nanganganib na maubos alinsunod sa mga pamantayan ng IUCN.

Description: Maesa brevipedicellata, a new species of Maesa (Primulaceae-Maesoideae) from Papua New Guinea, \nis described and illustrated based on herbarium specimen observations. The collections of this species resemble \nM. rufovillosa and were previously determined as that species. Maesa brevipedicellata is unique with its selfsupporting habit, hispid hairs throughout and paniculate inflorescences with very short pedicels. This new species \nmainly differs from M. rufovillosa by the habit (tree/shrub in M. brevipedicellata vs climber in M. rufovillosa) and the \ninflorescence structure (panicles in M. brevipedicellata vs simple racemes in M. rufovillosa).

Description: Three new species combinations are made under Villaria for the Philippine endemics Hypobathrum \ncoriaceum, H. multibracteatum and H. purpureum. Morphological features of these three Hypobathrum species \nrevealed a closer resemblance with Villaria than with Hypobathrum, as the three Philippine endemics possess a \nunilocular ovary with parietal placentation; a character that is not found in any genera of Octotropideae except in \nVillaria. Lectotypes and a neotype are selected.

Description: Hibiscus fabiana Cheek (sect. Furcaria, Malvaceae) is described from the Guinea Highlands of West \nAfrica, and its taxonomic affinities and ecology are considered. Hibiscus fabiana has previously been confused \nwith H. rostellatus but has red fleshy calyx ribs (vs not red and non-fleshy), the calyx surface is glabrous apart from \n1-armed bristles (vs densely covered in minute white stellate hairs and bristles 2\xe2\x80\x935-armed), the leaves 3(\xe2\x80\x935)-lobed, \nbases truncate to rounded (vs 5-lobed, cordate). The conservation status of the new species is assessed using the \nIUCN 2012 standard as Vulnerable. In the context of the recently discovered extinction of the Guinean endemic \nInversodicraea pygmaea G.Taylor (Podostemaceae), we discuss the 30 new species to science discovered in Guinea \nsince 2005, all but one of which are also range-restricted and threatened, usually by development or habitat loss. We \nconsider it urgent to avoid their extinction, ideally with in situ conservation using an Important PlantAreas approach.

Description: In Peninsular Malaysia, Rafflesia is represented by seven species of which R. kerrii (and R. su-meiae) \nstands out distinctly from the other five. The other five species, R. azlanii, R. cantleyi, R. parvimaculata, R. sharifahhapsahiae and R. tuanku-halimii, are collectively close enough to each other to be referred to as the R. cantleyi \ncomplex after its first-described species, R. cantleyi. Pulau Tioman has a population of R. cantleyi, which, because \nof its island location, is isolated from the mainland complex. This study was conducted to determine morphological \nvariation in a selected location in Pulau Tioman. Twelve flowers were studied with respect to characteristics such \nas wart (blotch) pattern on perianth lobes, warts (dots) on upper surface of the diaphragm, shape of the aperture, \nshape of processes and types of ramenta. These are the characters that have been used to define species in the \nR. cantleyi complex. The variation in the local Tioman population was compared with the variation in the R. cantleyi \ncomplex on the mainland, which is about the same magnitude. This supports the idea that R. cantleyi is a single \nhighly polymorphic species and that the species that have been described in the R. cantleyi complex should be \nreduced to varieties.

Description: By means of an integrated approach, including molecular, morphological, anatomical and histological data, we describe a new species of freshwater flatworm of the genus Dugesia from southwest China, representing the third species recorded for the country. Morphologically, the new species, Dugesia umbonata Song & Wang, sp. nov., is particularly characterised by the presence of a muscularised hump immediately antero-dorsally to a knee-shaped bend in its bursal canal and by an ejaculatory duct that opens subterminally through the dorsal side of the penis papilla. Four molecular datasets (18S rDNA; ITS-1; 28S rDNA; COI) facilitated determination of the phylogenetic position of the new species, which belongs to a clade comprising other species from the Australasian and Oriental regions. We also analysed the structure of its major nervous system by means of the acetylcholinesterase (AChE) histochemical method and compared these results with data available for three other species of Dugesia.

Description: The Caribbean scleractinian reef coral Agaricia undata (Agariciidae) is recorded for the first time as a host of the coral-gall crab Opecarcinus hypostegus (Cryptochiridae). The identity of the crab was confirmed with the help of DNA barcoding. The association has been documented with photographs taken in situ at 25 m depth and in the laboratory. The predominantly mesophotic depth range of the host species suggests this association to be present also at greater depths. With this record, all seven Agaricia species are now listed as gall-crab hosts, together with the agariciid Helioseris cucullata. Within the phylogeny of Agariciidae, Helioseris is not closely related to Agaricia. Therefore, the association between Caribbean agariciids and their gall-crab symbionts may either have originated early in their shared evolutionary history or later as a result of host range expansion. New information on coral-associated fauna, such as what is presented here, leads to a better insight on the diversity, evolution, and ecology of coral reef biota, particularly in the Caribbean, where cryptochirids have rarely been studied.

Description: This paper presents a first critical review of the beetle species (Insecta: Coleoptera) reported from the (former) Dutch Antilles as well as a history of beetle collecting and collectors on the islands. The introductory section provides a concise overview of the location, climate, geology and vegetation of the six islands. The catalogue is concluded with miscellaneous additions, corrections and annotations to the published records of the other islands of the northern Leeward Islands, and a comprehensive bibliography. (ZooBank registration: http://zoobank.org/ \nE2D76464-5AAE-4D75-9AC5-CA119E65D72A)

Description: ENGLISH: An overview of the records of Bohemannia auriciliella (De Joannis, 1909) in Europe is given, including the first record for Germany (Lower Saxony, Hannover, 2018) and Bulgaria (Burgas, 2002) and new records for the Netherlands and France. In total only 28 specimens are known. Information on the recognition of the moth, and on DNA barcode is provided and additionally, its hidden lifecycle is briefly discussed. \nGERMAN: F\xc3\xbcr die Zwergminiermotte Bohemannia auriciliella (De Joannis, 1909) wird eine Zusammenstellung aller bisherigen Fundorte Europas pr\xc3\xa4sentiert, einschlie\xc3\x9flich der Erstfunde f\xc3\xbcr Deutschland (Niedersachsen, Hannover, 2018) und Bulgarien (Burgas, 2002), und weiterer Nachweise f\xc3\xbcr die Niederlande und Frankreich. Insgesamt sind lediglich 28 Exemplare bekannt. Des Weiteren werden Diagnosemerkmale genannt und Informationen zum DNA-Barcode gegeben. Zus\xc3\xa4tzlich wird kurz auf den noch immer unbekannten Lebenszyklus dieser Art eingegangen.

Description: The term \xe2\x80\x9ctextura oblita\xe2\x80\x9d, referring to a tissue type in ascomycetes with apothecial ascomata, has caused much confusion to ascomycologists. Originally it was defined as a long-celled tissue type consisting of thick-walled hyphae with intercellular substance. However, this definition appeared not well, or not at all, applicable to the originally given examples like Phialea starbaeckii. This has resulted in two other definitions which are more or less the opposite of each other, viz. as a thick-walled tissue with gelatinized walls and as a thin-walled tissue embedded in a gelatinous matrix. The main issue is the location of the gelatinous substance in the relevant tissue: in the cell wall, extracellular, or both. Unfortunately all of the three tissues are called \xe2\x80\x9cgelatinous tissue\xe2\x80\x9d, although the term \xe2\x80\x9cgelatinous tissue\xe2\x80\x9d according to its definition concerns only tissue with extrahyphal gel. This implies that essential information about the location of the gel is ignored. In effect, all three conceptions of textura oblita are reducible to versions of textura porrecta that differ in the location of the gel. Similarly other tissue types can occur in different versions. \n \nThe author discusses the postulated mechanisms of gel formation in fungal tissues. These concern disintegration of the outer layer(s) of hyphal walls, disintegration of hyphae, and secretion, here linked to exocytosis. There is supposed to be a correlation between the way of gel formation on the one hand, and the structure of the sporocarp and the cell wall in ascomycetes and basidiomycetes on the other hand. \n \nTo conclude, an emended tissue typology is provided in which the distinguished versions of the six basic tissue types are arranged according to the shape of their cells, the arrangement of their hyphae, the occurrence of thickened cell walls, and the occurrence of extracellular gel. \n \nThe species name Cyathicula starbaeckii, comb. nov., is validly published here.

Description: We describe an effective approach to automated text digitisation with respect to natural history specimen labels. These labels contain much useful data about the specimen including its collector, country of origin, and collection date. Our approach to automatically extracting these data takes the form of a pipeline. Recommendations are made for the pipeline\'s component parts based on state-of-the-art technologies. \n \nOptical Character Recognition (OCR) can be used to digitise text on images of specimens. However, recognising text quickly and accurately from these images can be a challenge for OCR. We show that OCR performance can be improved by prior segmentation of specimen images into their component parts. This ensures that only text-bearing labels are submitted for OCR processing as opposed to whole specimen images, which inevitably contain non-textual information that may lead to false positive readings. In our testing Tesseract OCR version 4.0.0 offers promising text recognition accuracy with segmented images. \n \nNot all the text on specimen labels is printed. Handwritten text varies much more and does not conform to standard shapes and sizes of individual characters, which poses an additional challenge for OCR. Recently, deep learning has allowed for significant advances in this area. Google\'s Cloud Vision, which is based on deep learning, is trained on large-scale datasets, and is shown to be quite adept at this task. This may take us some way towards negating the need for humans to routinely transcribe handwritten text. \n \nDetermining the countries and collectors of specimens has been the goal of previous automated text digitisation research activities. Our approach also focuses on these two pieces of information. An area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) known as Named Entity Recognition (NER) has matured enough to semi-automate this task. Our experiments demonstrated that existing approaches can accurately recognise location and person names within the text extracted from segmented images via Tesseract version 4.0.0. \n \nWe have highlighted the main recommendations for potential pipeline components. The paper also provides guidance on selecting appropriate software solutions. These include automatic language identification, terminology extraction, and integrating all pipeline components into a scientific workflow to automate the overall digitisation process.

Description: Adaptation to different ecological environments can, through divergent selection, generate phenotypic and genetic differences between populations, and eventually give rise to new species. The fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) has been proposed to represent an early stage of ecological speciation, driven by differential habitat adaptation through the deposition and development of larvae in streams versus ponds in the Kottenforst near Bonn (Germany). We set out to test this hypothesis of ecological speciation in an area different from the one where it was raised and we took the opportunity to explore for drivers of genetic differentiation at a landscape scale. A survey over 640 localities \ndemonstrated the species\xe2\x80\x99 presence in ponds and streams across forests, hilly terrain and areas with hedgerows (\xe2\x80\x98bocage\xe2\x80\x99). Genetic variation at 14 microsatellite loci across 41 localities in and around two small deciduous forests showed that salamander effective population sizes were higher in forests than in the bocage, with panmixia in the forests (Fst 〈 0.010) versus genetic drift or founder effects in several of the small and more or less isolated bocage populations (Fst 〉 0.025). The system fits the \xe2\x80\x98mainlandisland\xe2\x80\x99 metapopulation model rather than indicating adaptive genetic divergence in pond versus stream larval habitats. A reanalysis of the Kottenforst data indicated that microsatellite genetic variation fitted a geographical rather than an environmental axis, with a sharp transition from a western pondbreeding \nto an eastern, more frequently stream-breeding group of populations. A parallel changeover in mitochondrial DNA exists but remains to be well documented. The data support the existence of a hybrid zone following secondary contact of differentiated lineages, more so than speciation in situ.

Description: DiSSCo, the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, is a pan-European Research \nInfrastructure (RI) mobilising, unifying bio- and geo-diversity information connected to the \nspecimens held in natural science collections and delivering it to scientific communities and \nbeyond. Bringing together 120 institutions across 21 countries and combining earlier \ninvestments in data interoperability practices with technological advancements in \ndigitisation, cloud services and semantic linking, DiSSCo makes the data from natural \nscience collections available as one virtual data cloud, connected with data emerging from \nnew techniques and not already linked to specimens. These new data include DNA \nbarcodes, whole genome sequences, proteomics and metabolomics data, chemical data, \ntrait data, and imaging data (Computer-assisted Tomography (CT), Synchrotron, etc.), to name but a few; and will lead to a wide range of end-user services that begins with finding, \naccessing, using and improving data. DiSSCo will deliver the diagnostic information \nrequired for novel approaches and new services that will transform the landscape of what \nis possible in ways that are hard to imagine today. \nWith approximately 1.5 billion objects to be digitised, bringing natural science collections to \nthe information age is expected to result in many tens of petabytes of new data over the \nnext decades, used on average by 5,000 \xe2\x80\x93 15,000 unique users every day. This requires \nnew skills, clear policies and robust procedures and new technologies to create, work with \nand manage large digital datasets over their entire research data lifecycle, including their \nlong-term storage and preservation and open access. Such processes and procedures \nmust match and be derived from the latest thinking in open science and data management, \nrealising the core principles of \'findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable\' (FAIR). \nSynthesised from results of the ICEDIG project ("Innovation and Consolidation for Large \nScale Digitisation of Natural Heritage", EU Horizon 2020 grant agreement No. 777483) the \nDiSSCo Conceptual Design Blueprint covers the organisational arrangements, processes \nand practices, the architecture, tools and technologies, culture, skills and capacity building \nand governance and business model proposals for constructing the digitisation \ninfrastructure of DiSSCo. In this context, the digitisation infrastructure of DiSSCo must be \ninterpreted as that infrastructure (machinery, processing, procedures, personnel, \norganisation) offering Europe-wide capabilities for mass digitisation and digitisation-ondemand, \nand for the subsequent management (i.e., curation, publication, processing) and \nuse of the resulting data. The blueprint constitutes the essential background needed to \ncontinue work to raise the overall maturity of the DiSSCo Programme across multiple \ndimensions (organisational, technical, scientific, data, financial) to achieve readiness to \nbegin construction. \nToday, collection digitisation efforts have reached most collection-holding institutions \nacross Europe. Much of the leadership and many of the people involved in digitisation and \nworking with digital collections wish to take steps forward and expand the efforts to benefit \nfurther from the already noticeable positive effects. The collective results of examining \ntechnical, financial, policy and governance aspects show the way forward to operating a \nlarge distributed initiative i.e., the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) for \nnatural science collections across Europe. Ample examples, opportunities and need for \ninnovation and consolidation for large scale digitisation of natural heritage have been \ndescribed. The blueprint makes one hundred and four (104) recommendations to be \nconsidered by other elements of the DiSSCo Programme of linked projects (i.e., \nSYNTHESYS+, COST MOBILISE, DiSSCo Prepare, and others to follow) and the DiSSCo \nProgramme leadership as the journey towards organisational, technical, scientific, data and \nfinancial readiness continues. \nNevertheless, significant obstacles must be overcome as a matter of priority if DiSSCo is to \nmove beyond its Design and Preparatory Phases during 2024. Specifically, these include: \nOrganisational: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Strengthen common purpose by adopting a common framework for policy \nharmonisation and capacity enhancement across broad areas, especially in respect \nof digitisation strategy and prioritisation, digitisation processes and techniques, data \nand digital media publication and open access, protection of and access to \nsensitive data, and administration of access and benefit sharing. \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Pursue the joint ventures and other relationships necessary to the successful \ndelivery of the DiSSCo mission, especially ventures with GBIF and other \ninternational and regional digitisation and data aggregation organisations, in the \ncontext of infrastructure policy frameworks, such as EOSC. Proceed with the \nexplicit aim of avoiding divergences of approach in global natural science \ncollections data management and research. \nTechnical: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Adopt and enhance the DiSSCo Digital Specimen Architecture and, specifically as \na matter of urgency, establish the persistent identifier scheme to be used by \nDiSSCo and (ideally) other comparable regional initiatives. \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Establish (software) engineering development and (infrastructure) operations team \nand direction essential to the delivery of services and functionalities expected from \nDiSSCo such that earnest engineering can lead to an early start of DiSSCo \noperations. \nScientific: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Establish a common digital research agenda leveraging Digital (extended) \nSpecimens as anchoring points for all specimen-associated and -derived \ninformation, demonstrating to research institutions and policy/decision-makers the \nnew possibilities, opportunities and value of participating in the DiSSCo research \ninfrastructure. \nData: \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Adopt the FAIR Digital Object Framework and the International Image \nInteroperability Framework as the low entropy means to achieving uniform access \nto rich data (image and non-image) that is findable, accessible, interoperable and \nreusable (FAIR). \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Develop and promote best practice approaches towards achieving the best \ndigitisation results in terms of quality (best, according to agreed minimum \ninformation and other specifications), time (highest throughput, fast), and cost \n(lowest, minimal per specimen). \nFinancial \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Broaden attractiveness (i.e., improve bankability) of DiSSCo as an infrastructure to \ninvest in. \n\xe2\x80\xa2 Plan for finding ways to bridge the funding gap to avoid disruptions in the critical \nfunding path that risks interrupting core operations; especially when the gap opens \nbetween the end of preparations and beginning of implementation due to unsolved \npolitical difficulties. \nStrategically, it is vital to balance the multiple factors addressed by the blueprint against \none another to achieve the desired goals of the DiSSCo programme. Decisions cannot be \ntaken on one aspect alone without considering other aspects, and here the various \ngovernance structures of DiSSCo (General Assembly, advisory boards, and stakeholder \nforums) play a critical role over the coming years.

Description: Asia contains a high species diversity of the freshwater gastropod genus Theodoxus. Recent molecular and morphological reviews of this diversity have uncovered a number of yet undescribed species while suggesting the urgent revision of several others. Moreover, some of these studies have indicated a number of species previously not recorded for this continent. Despite the advancements, a taxonomic revision and an update on the distribution of Theodoxus spp. in Asia is still pending. Here, we construct the most robust phylogeny of Theodoxus up to now and review original descriptions, type material, recent taxonomic revisions, compendia, and species lists to provide a comprehensive checklist of all known extant Asian Theodoxus spp. Our checklist also provides descriptions for three recently discovered and yet undescribed species (Theodoxus gurur Sands & Gl\xc3\xb6er, sp. nov., Theodoxus wesselinghi Sands & Gl\xc3\xb6er, sp. nov., and Theodoxus wilkei Sands & Gl\xc3\xb6er, sp. nov.), as well as shows the need to synonymise several previously described morphospecies. The present revision recognizes 14 extant Theodoxus spp. for Asia. Some of these species are widespread, while others are endemic to just a single location. Based on the revised and new distribution data, we provide updates and new assessments of species conservation statuses.

Description: Pterichis comprises about 40 species distributed from Costa Rica in the north to Bolivia in the south. The \nspecies grow as terrestrial plants usually in paramo and subparamo, but there are also reports of populations in \nhigh montane forest. In this paper the complete enumeration of the six Bolivian representatives of the orchid genus \nPterichis sect. Pterichis is presented.A total of four new species are described and one new record, P. aragogiana, for \nthe country is reported. An updated key to the species of the nominal section of Pterichis from Bolivia is presented.

Description: A new species of Freycinetia (Pandanaceae; Freycinetoideae) from Llavac, Quezon Province in Luzon Island, the Philippines, is proposed here, namely Freycinetia nonatoi. Freycinetia nonatoi is characterized by a lobed auricle of the sheath with conspicuous spines on the margins and bright yellow bracts. These three morphological features distinguish it from the nearest species, F. sumatrana. The discovery of F. nonatoi also marks the first record of a member of the section Auriculifoliae with spiny margins.

Description: Pelliciera is a genus of mangrove trees with distinct showy flowers with five petals subtended by two \nlarge foliaceous bracts. The genus, thought to be monotypic, only containing P. rhizophorae, was classified recently \nin the small diverse family, the Tetrameristaceae. This distinctive genus occurs in a relatively restricted distribution \nin Central and northern South America in the Atlantic-East Pacific region. In this recent decade, two varietal forms \nhave been reported across its range, of which one appears to be a colour morph referred to much earlier as P. rhizophorae var. benthamii. The taxonomic status of the earlier morph was, however, insufficient to warrant individual \nrecognition at the time, so the genus remained monotypic with no varietal forms. The aim of this treatment has been \nto review the systematic history of the genus, to thoroughly re-assess available observations and to re-evaluate \nthe current taxonomic status. In conclusion, the genus is recognised now as having two closely related species, \ndescribed here as P. benthamii along with a redefined P. rhizophorae. Characters such as leafy bract colour, leaf \ndentition and petal shape used in their discrimination are provided, along with notes on the ecology, phenology, a \ndiagnostic key, and a revised distribution map that displays the oddly overlapping occurrences.

Description: Orchidantha anthracina (Lowiaceae), discovered at the south central coast of Vietnam, is described and \nillustrated, bringing the total number of species in the family to 26, of which four occur in Vietnam. The notes on \ndistribution, habitat and etymology are given and a preliminary conservation assessment is provided. The species \nis compared with O. vietnamica, with which it shares flowers of similar size and colours, but from which it is readily \ndistinguished by a narrow and strongly reflexed dorsal sepal and spreading lateral sepals, not supporting the labellum. Notes with additional comparisons to all species with a similar arrangement of lateral sepals are also provided.

Description: A catalogue of 29 German individuals who were active in the botanical exploration of Angola during the \n19th and 20th centuries is presented. One of these is likely of Swiss nationality but with significant links to German \nsettlers in Angola. The catalogue includes information on the places of collecting activity, dates on which locations \nwere visited, the whereabouts of preserved exsiccata, maps with itineraries, and biographical information on the \ncollectors. Initial botanical exploration in Angola by Germans was linked to efforts to establish and expand Germany\xe2\x80\x99s \ncolonies in Africa. Later exploration followed after some Germans had settled in the country. However, Angola was \nnever under German control. The most intense period of German collecting activity in this south-tropical African \ncountry took place from the early-1870s to 1900. Twenty-four Germans collected plant specimens in Angola for \ndeposition in herbaria in continental Europe, mostly in Germany. Five other naturalists or explorers were active in \nAngola but collections have not been located under their names or were made by someone else. A further three collectors, who are sometimes cited as having collected material in Angola but did not do so, are also briefly discussed

Description: Relating the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 for Ocean and Life Below Water to the 16 remaining SDGs in the UN 2030 sustainable development agenda. A holistic approach that embraces sustainable Ocean stewardship informed by best available science, data and services to support society and the economy is required to create the ‘Future We Want’. The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development is an essential foundation to achieve this objective.

Description: Published

Description: A recently published study analyzed the phylogenetic relationship between the genera Centrodinium and Alexandrium, confirming an earlier publication showing the genus Alexandrium as paraphyletic. This most recent manuscript retained the genus Alexandrium, introduced a new genus Episemicolon, resurrected two genera, Gessnerium and Protogonyaulax, and stated that: “The polyphyly [sic] of Alexandrium is solved with the split into four genera”. However, these reintroduced taxa were not based on monophyletic groups. Therefore this work, if accepted, would result in replacing a single paraphyletic taxon with several non-monophyletic ones. The morphological data presented for genus characterization also do not convincingly support taxa delimitations. The combination of weak molecular phylogenetics and the lack of diagnostic traits (i.e., autapomorphies) render the applicability of the concept of limited use. The proposal to split the genus Alexandrium on the basis of our current knowledge is rejected herein. The aim here is not to present an alternative analysis and revision, but to maintain Alexandrium. A better constructed and more phylogenetically accurate revision can and should wait until more complete evidence becomes available and there is a strong reason to revise the genus Alexandrium. The reasons are explained in detail by a review of the available molecular and morphological data for species of the genera Alexandrium and Centrodinium. In addition, cyst morphology and chemotaxonomy are discussed, and the need for integrative taxonomy is highlighted.

Description: Azaspiracids, produced by some species of the dinoflagellate genera Azadinium and Amphidoma, can cause a syndrome in humans called azaspiracid shellfish poisoning (AZP). In 1995, mussels from the Irish west coast contaminated with azaspiracids were, for the first time, linked to this human illness that has symptoms of nausea, vomiting, severe diarrhea, and stomach cramps. The only confirmed cases of AZP to date in the United States occurred in Washington State in 2008 from mussels imported from Ireland. Shortly after this case, several others involving similar gastrointestinal symptoms were reported by shellfish consumers from Washington State. However, no detectable diarrhetic shellfish toxins or Vibrio contamination were found. Cursory analysis of Solid Phase Adsorption Toxin Tracking (SPATT) samplers suggested the presence of azaspiracids in Washington State waters and motivated a study to evaluate the presence and distribution of Azadinium species in the region. During the spring and summer months of 2014–2015, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analyses detected the presence of the toxigenic species Azadinium poporum and A. spinosum on the outer coast and throughout the inland waters of Washington State. In 2016–2018, standard curves developed using A. poporum isolated from Puget Sound and A. spinosum isolated from the North Sea were used to quantify abundances of up to 10,525 cells L−1 of A. poporum and 156 cells L−1 of A. spinosum at shore-based sites. Abundances up to 1,206 cells L−1 of A. poporum and 30 cells L−1 of A. spinosum were measured in the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest in 2017. Other harmful genera, including Alexandrium, Dinophysis, and Pseudo-nitzschia, were observed using light microscopy at coastal sites where A. poporum was also observed. In some samples where both A. poporum and A. spinosum were absent, an Amphidomataceae-specific qPCR assay indicated that other species of Azadinium or Amphidoma were present. The identification of Azadinium species in the PNW demonstrates the need to assess their toxicity and to incorporate their routine detection in monitoring programs to aid resource managers in mitigating risks to azaspiracid shellfish poisoning in this region.

Description: The productive but highly exposed coastline of the southern Benguela eastern boundary upwelling system offers limited natural environment for aquaculture. Saldanha Bay located on the west coast of South Africa is one of the few embayments on the coastline that provides a productive and relatively sheltered environment suitable for the cultivation of shellfish. Consequently, bivalve culture in South Africa is centered in Saldanha Bay and is presently targeted for expansion. Pseudo-nitzschia blooms including toxin-producing species are shown to contribute significantly to the phytoplankton of Saldanha Bay specifically in spring and summer. Their dominance at this time of the year, when upwelling is strongest, fits the ecological profile of Pseudo-nitzschia occurring during periods of high turbulence and nutrients. Multiple Pseudo-nitzschia blooms were sampled under varying environmental conditions and the strength of the relationship between Pseudo-nitzschia cell abundance and particulate domoic acid (pDA) content, reflecting bloom toxicity, varied greatly. This variability is the result of the combined influence of species and strain composition of the Pseudo-nitzschia assemblage and the effect of environmental conditions on toxin production. Elevated levels of pDA were associated with higher concentrations of cells of the P. seriata complex differentiated by frustule width (〉3 µm). P. australis was identified as a toxin-producing species and a prominent member of the P. seriata complex. Low DA levels in shellfish in Saldanha Bay are considered a function of low cellular domoic acid (cDA). Silicate limitation has emerged as an important factor inducing DA production in Pseudo-nitzschia species. The high ratio of silicate to nitrate in Saldanha Bay provides a plausible explanation for the low toxin content of Pseudo-nitzschia blooms in the bay and the consequent low risk posed by these blooms to the aquaculture sector.

Description: The German European lobster population of Homarus gammarus has been in decline since the 1960s and its recovery efforts with reared juveniles have yet to produce good results. Juveniles are one of the most vulnerable life stages as they depend on the availability of hard substrate that serves them as shelter, like rocks and boulders. Since the substrate in the German North Sea consists mostly of soft substrate like sand and mud, one viable habitat is the rocky island Helgoland. An increase of possible habitats could therefore increase the survivability of lobsters, wild and reared all together. Two of those new possible habitats are riffs constructed from the European oyster Ostrea edulis, with restoration attempts for rehabilitation in the North Sea already in progress. The other are the foundation of newly constructed Wind Farms, which often consists of rocks and boulders that envelope the foundation on the seabed. While this could lead to a surplus in new habitats due to the construction of several new Wind Farms over the next years, little is known about the possible effects’ exposure to the low-frequency noise produced by the Wind Turbines operation. To understand habitat selection and anti-predator responses lobsters might face in these underwater structures, the present study aimed to test noise and predator effects on shelter preference and behavioural responses in a full factorial design. Juvenile lobsters (n = 104; mean and standard deviation total length of 12,29 ± 0,97 mm) were exposed to one of the four conditions (control, noise, predator, and noise + predator) for three hours during nighttime (when they are most active), and the time spend on predetermined behaviours was analysed from video records (20 min were analysed). Measured at the beginning and at the end of the exposure was the preferred shelter selection, lobsters selected the rocks over the oyster shells most of the time, which is supported by the literature. However, as oyster reefs represent much more complex habitats than the stacked shells setting used in the experiment, the use of oyster reefs as shelter cannot be discarded yet. The behavioural analysis highlighted that lobsters exposed to noise + predation were more active (general movement, shelter behaviour and exploration). The exploration behaviour was particularly predominant in comparison with the lobsters exposed to noise only. This higher activity made the lobster more visible to its predator, which possibly indicates that noise might distract the lobsters in their usual anti-predator responses. This study has therefore shown that noise exposure from Wind Farms could potentially affect the anti-predator behaviour of juvenile H. gammarus and possibly reducing its survival. In the view of the fishery industry interests in growing lobster in the Wind Farm foundations or in the view of the conservation actions of releasing reared juveniles in these, further research is needed to observe if such disturbance in the anti-predator responses occur in the wild. If so, the efforts of sustainable exploitation or conservation for the species might be in vain.

Description: The Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter (CRISTAL) mission is one of six high-priority candidate missions (HPCMs) under consideration by the European Commission to enlarge the Copernicus Space Component. Together, the high-priority candidate missions fill gaps in the measurement capability of the existing Copernicus Space Component to address emerging and urgent user requirements in relation to monitoring anthropogenic CO2 emissions, polar environments, and land surfaces. The ambition is to enlarge the Copernicus Space Component with the high-priority candidate missions in the mid-2020s to provide enhanced continuity of services in synergy with the next generation of the existing Copernicus Sentinel missions. CRISTAL will carry a dual-frequency synthetic-aperture radar altimeter as its primary payload for measuring surface height and a passive microwave radiometer to support atmospheric corrections and surface-type classification. The altimeter will have interferometric capabilities at Kuband for improved ground resolution and a second (noninterferometric) Ka-band frequency to provide information on snow layer properties. This paper outlines the user consultations that have supported expansion of the Copernicus Space Component to include the high-priority candidate missions, describes the primary and secondary objectives of the CRISTAL mission, identifies the key contributions the CRISTAL mission will make, and presents a concept-as far as it is already defined-for the mission payload.

Description: Surface melt, driven by atmospheric temperatures and albedo, is a strong contribution of mass loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet. In the past, black carbon, algae and other light-absorbing impurities were suggested to govern albedo in Greenland’s ablation zone. Here we combine optical (MODIS/Sentinel-2) and radar (Sentinel-1) remote sensing data with airborne radar and laser scanner data, and engage firn modelling to identify the governing factors leading to dark glacier surfaces in Northeast Greenland. After the drainage of supraglacial lakes, the former lake ground is a clean surface represented by a high reflectance in Sentinel-2 data and aerial photography. These bright spots move with the ice flow and darken by more than 20% over only two years. In contrast, sites further inland do not exhibit this effect. This finding suggests that local deposition of dust, rather than black carbon or cryoconite formation, is the governing factor of albedo of fast-moving outlet glaciers. This is in agreement with a previous field study in the area which finds the mineralogical composition and grain size of the dust comparable with that of the surrounding soils.

Description: Ship traffic, population, infrastructure development, and mining activities are expected to increase in the Arctic due to its rising temperatures. This is expected to produce a major impact on aerosol composition. Metals contained in atmospheric particles are powerful markers and can be extremely helpful to gain insights on the different aerosol sources. Thiswork aims at studying the sources of metals in the Arctic aerosol sampled at the Thule High Arctic Atmospheric Observatory (THAAO; Greenland, 76.5°N 68.8°W). Due to the particular composition of Greenlandic soils and to properties of other sources, it was possible to find several signatures of natural and anthropogenic aerosols transported from local and long-range regions. Arctic haze (AH) at Thule builds up on long-range transported aerosol mainly from Canada and Nord America. From a chemical standpoint, this aerosol is characterized by a high concentration of sulfate, Pb, As and Cd and by a La/Ce ratio larger than 1. The Ti/Al and Fe/Al ratios in the AH aerosol are lower (Ti/Al = 0.04 w/w; Fe/ Al= 0.79 w/w) than for local aerosol (Ti/Al= 0.07 w/w; Fe/Al = 0.89 w/w). Conversely, aerosol arising from coastal areas of South-West Greenland is characterized by a high concentration of V,Ni, and Cr. These metals, generally considered anthropogenic, arise heremainly fromnatural crustal sources. In some summer samples, however, the V/Ni ratio becomes larger than 3. In particular, cases displaying this characteristic ratio, as also shown by backward trajectories, are associated with sporadic transport to Thule of ship aerosol from ships passing through Baffin Bay and arriving to Thule during summer. Although further measurements are necessary to confirm the discussed results, the analysis carried out in this work on a large number of metals sampled in coastal Greenland aerosol is unprecedented.

Description: Published

Description: 140511

Description: 5A. Ricerche polari e paleoclima

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Calc-alkaline and alkaline magmatic activity is generally separated in space and/or in time. The Eastern Transylvanian Basin in Romania is one of the few places where, during Pleistocene, alkaline eruptions occurred contemporaneously with the calc-alkaline activity. Mantle xenoliths entrained in Perşani Mts. alkaline volcanic products have been studied in order to investigate the interaction of metasomatic agents of different magmatic affinities with the mantle wedge. Based on mineral major and trace element and noble gases in fluid inclusions, two main events have been recognized. The first was a pervasive, complete re-fertilization of a previously depleted mantle by a calc-alkaline subduction-related melt, causing the formation of very fertile, amphibole-bearing lithotypes. This is shown by the a) increased amounts of modal clinopyroxene up to 21.9 % with Al2O3 contents up to 8.16 wt%, higher than what is expected for clinopyroxene in Primordial Mantle; b) 4He/40Ar* ratios up to 1.2, within the reported range for mantle production; c) 3He/4He in olivine, opx and cpx of 5.8 ± 0.2 Ra, among the most radiogenic values of European mantle, below the typical MORB mantle value (8 ± 1 Ra), reflecting recycling of crustal material in the local lithosphere. The second event is related to later interaction with an alkaline metasomatic agent similar to the host basalts that caused slight LREE enrichment in pyroxenes and disseminated amphiboles and precipitation of vein amphiboles with a composition similar to amphiboles megacrysts also found in the Perşani Mts. volcanic deposits. This is highlighted by the 4He/40Ar* and 3He/4He values found in some opx and cpx, up to 2.5 and 6.6 Ra, respectively, more typical of magmatic fluids.

Description: Published

Description: 105516

Description: 1T. Struttura della Terra

Description: 1V. Storia eruttiva

Description: 2V. Struttura e sistema di alimentazione dei vulcani

Description: 3V. Proprietà chimico-fisiche dei magmi e dei prodotti vulcanici

Description: JCR Journal