Editorial: Arctic marine biodiversity under change

Abstract

Marine biodiversity in the Arctic is changing in response toaltered physical environment, subsequent and ecologicalchanges as well as anthropogenic disturbances (Wassmannet al. 2011). The Arctic region has become warmer in thepast three decades (ACIA 2005), and most global climatemodels indicate a continued, likely accelerated, warmingtrend in the coming decades (IPCC 2007). Assessingconsequences of climatic change to Arctic marine ecosys-tems is contingent upon identifying the physical drivers thatregulate biological communities and understanding themechanisms involved. Changes in the physical marineenvironment mainly involve oceanographic- (temperature,salinity and pH) and ice conditions, whereas ecologicalchanges typically include altered species distributions,community structure as well as species invasions. Addi-tional perturbations may be caused by anthropogenic effectsfrom fisheries, industrial resource utilization and atmo-spheric emissions (AMAP 2009). The evidence for foot-prints of climate change in Arctic marine environments isaccumulating, but the research efforts evaluating theimpacts of climate change on Arctic marine biodiversityare still rather limited (Wassmann et al. 2011).Marine biodiversity is intimately linked to ecosystemfunction. In order to assess changes in Arctic marinebiodiversity, we need to know how the ecological commu-nities and their species are structured and how theyfunction, within a first-order descriptive framework. For theArctic marine environment, this knowledge is still frag-mented, and few long-term data series exist. Arctic ecosys-tems are understudied due to logistic challenges and highresearch costs. Gaps in research on marine biodiversity needto be filled soon in order to describe and understand themagnitude and extent of changes observed. Ongoing changesin the Arctic marine environment have put the ecosystems ofArctic seas, and the organisms living within them, on theagenda of research institutions, managers and governments.Marine Biodiversity has recently gotten an increasedfocus through the International Census for Marine Life(CoML), launched in 2000 (Yarincik and O’Dor 2005). TheArctic Ocean Diversity project (ArcOD), an Arctic compo-nent of CoML, was launched in 2004 (Gradinger et al.2010). The ArcOD has involved a rather large effort (> 100scientists) to compile existing data, taxonomically identifysamples still in boxes or on shelves, and collect newsamples to fill regional gaps. These projects, and the widedissemination of their results (e.g., www.arcodiv.org), havecaused a rejuvenated interest in marine biodiversity.Consequently, “Marine Biodiversity under change” wasa topic on the international Arctic Frontiers Conference2010 in Tromso, Norway. Pan-Arctic presentations onArctic Marine Biodiversity are presented in a prior volumeof Marine Biodiversity (Bluhm et al. 2011). The 9 papers inthis volume include more specific, and regionally focused,research and include a range of topics such as marinebiodiversity, life history and invasions. The papers in thisvolume can be grouped as follows: pelagic diversity (2),fishes (2), benthos (4) and invasive species (1). Theseresults fill important gaps in our knowledge by targetinglittle studied research topics or species, or times of the yearwhen little prior research has been conducted. Some studiescombine data from historical surveys with current inves-