В своей лекции известный британский биолог и эколог расскажет о процессах, которые происходят в Арктике под влиянием глобального изменения климата, при этом ученый будет опираться на материалы полярных экспедиций, в которых он участвовал. Одна из них проходила, в частности, близ западного побережья архипелага Шпицберген («Царства северного медведя»), где исследователи собирали образцы мельчайших организмов на глубине до 1000 м под поверхностью воды. 

С помощью новейших технологий секвенирования ДНК исследователям удалось получить уникальные свидетельства того, как меняется жизнь в водах Северного Ледовитого океана под воздействием глобального потепления, что может привести, как считает д-р Вильсон, к катастрофическим последствиям для Арктики.

 Dr Bryan Wilson, UK

Department of Biology, University of Bergen
“A year in the life of the minutiae in a changing Arctic Ocean”

As the global climate changes, the Arctic is seen to be warming significantly faster than other regions around the world and it is likely (and already apparent in the Northern Russian territories)  that it will experience considerable shifts in the thawing of its permafrost and the length of its ice melt seasons, leading to changes in amount of reflected sunlight and in the inputs to the sea from the land and rivers around. The exchange of nutrients between Arctic surface and deep waters and their cycling throughout the water column is driven by the seasonality of some of the most extreme environmental changes on the planet.

The impacts, however, of the current global climate transition period on the Arctic Ocean's biodiversity and its continued nutrient cycling are not yet known. And so, we investigated the incredible seasonal variation in the microbes, the tiniest of organisms and the base of the foodchain for all life in the ocean, collecting samples down to 1000 m below the sea's surface around the Western coast of the Svalbard archipelago (the "Kingdom of the Ice Bear!") throughout the entire polar year, and used the latest DNA sequencing technologies to examine the life in the upper waters (which are defined by the changing light conditions of the polar summer and winter) and the permanently dark and cold abyssal ocean depths. Our expeditions through the frozen waters in the north of the world suggest that the melting Arctic ice pack my have a significant impact on the frigid deep waters beneath, which could trigger a catastrophic biological cascade, affecting all life that depends upon the polar ocean for survival...