Parallel session D:
Caught in Transit – Key Processes on the Inflow Shelves and Their Regional Connectivity to Pan-Arctic Systems
Session chairs:
The central Arctic Ocean is tightly connected to the northern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through advection processes that link the subarctic regions with the Arctic. In addition to heat and salt, this advection transports nutrients, organic carbon, organisms, pollutants, and metals. All of these objects can be transformed on the continental shelves as they transit into the high Arctic. The Barents and Bering/Chukchi Seas constitute the major inflow shelves. These regions are experiencing large changes such as seawater warming, northward receding Marginal Ice Zones, increased ocean acidification and borealization of the ecosystems, as well as increased human impact from fisheries, petroleum industry, tourism, and vessel traffic.
This session invites contributions focusing on processes occurring in the inflow shelves affecting past, present and future change to the ecosystem and connections to the High Arctic. Disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and social studies, specifically if related to management and stakeholders needs, are welcome, as well as investigations addressing human impacts on ecosystems. Both observational, experimental, and model studies are of relevance.
Parallel session E:
Around and Out: Processes Along Interior and Outflow Shelves
Session chairs:
Whereas many of the climate drivers of ecosystem change are shared across the Arctic, their ecosystem impacts are modulated by regional and local characteristics. Interior and outflow shelves differ from the Nansen Legacy study area, the northern Barents Sea, in their geomorphology, water mass characteristics, links with terrestrial and fresh-water systems, biotic communities, and how they are utilized by Arctic peoples.
In this session, we invite contributions focusing on ecosystem changes in interior and outflow shelves from a multidisciplinary perspective. We hope to identify commonalities and differences in ecosystem response to climate change and other human impacts from the atmospheric, oceanic, geochemical, and ecological fields as well as the effect of climate changes on humans in Arctic coastal communities. Paleoceanographic studies and model projections will expand the temporal aspects of our studies, and insights gained can improve observational strategies in these regions of the Arctic.This session should also contribute to exploring the linkages across domains such that we can better integrate our regional understanding within a context of pan-Arctic change.
Parallel session F:
A Shattered Mirror – Understanding a Rapidly Changing Central Arctic Ocean
Session chairs:
The central Arctic Ocean is experiencing rapid changes, primarily exemplified by the reduction in sea ice, which is caused by atmospheric and oceanic changes and accelerated by feedback processes. A prominent example of change is the borealization of the Arctic, affecting water column stability which is a key aspect of the functioning of the whole Arctic marine system. The ongoing changes have largely unknown consequences on polar marine biogeochemistry and ecosystem functioning in the deep Arctic basins. The lack of observations in this difficult-to-access region in part hampers a comprehensive assessment of the changes that have already occurred in the system, but also limits future predictability. This session seeks work focusing on the physical, biogeochemical, and ecological changes that have occurred in the central Arctic in recent decades.
We welcome studies based on observational, modelling, and combined approaches that seek to explain driving forces of observed change, examine societal impacts of these changes, or give examples of technological development that allows investigation of the Arctic Ocean.
