Abstract
Abstract. Although Arctic marine ecosystems are changing rapidly, year-round monitoring is currently very limited and presents multiple challenges unique to this region. The Chukchi Ecosystem Observatory (CEO) described here uses new sensor technologies to meet needs for continuous, high-resolution, and year-round observations across all levels of the ecosystem in the biologically productive and seasonally ice-covered Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. This mooring array records a broad suite of variables that facilitate observations, yielding better understanding of physical, chemical, and biological couplings, phenologies, and the overall state of this Arctic shelf marine ecosystem. While cold temperatures and 8 months of sea ice cover present challenging conditions for the operation of the CEO, this extreme environment also serves as a rigorous test bed for innovative ecosystem monitoring strategies. Here, we present data from the 2015–2016 CEO deployments that provide new perspectives on the seasonal evolution of sea ice, water column structure, and physical properties, annual cycles in nitrate, dissolved oxygen, phytoplankton blooms, and export, zooplankton abundance and vertical migration, the occurrence of Arctic cod, and vocalizations of marine mammals such as bearded seals. These integrated ecosystem observations are being combined with ship-based observations and modeling to produce a time series that documents biological community responses to changing seasonal sea ice and water temperatures while establishing a scientific basis for ecosystem management.
Highlights
On the Chukchi Shelf, annual average sea surface temperatures have been as much as 0.8 ◦C warmer during the last 2 decades compared to the average of the 1900–2016 period of record (Smith et al, 2008, Fig. 1)
In the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, ice cover has decreased by 1.24 days year−1 since 1979, a trend that accelerated to a decrease of 12.84 days year−1 in the 2000–2012 period (Frey et al, 2015)
The consequences of these anthropogenic changes are visible in the marine ecosystem and manifest themselves as species range shifts, changes in abundance, growth, condition, behavior and phenology, and community and regime shifts (Wassmann et al, 2011). These anthropogenic changes have large implications for the ecosystem and the global carbon cycle and climate. Disentangle their effects from those caused by natural variability, and improve our mechanistic understanding of the ecosystem dynamics, we designed an observatory capable of continuously recording a broad suite of ecosystem variables in the northeastern Chukchi Sea (Figs. 2–4)
Summary
The consequences of these anthropogenic changes are visible in the marine ecosystem and manifest themselves as species range shifts, changes in abundance, growth, condition, behavior and phenology, and community and regime shifts (Wassmann et al, 2011). These anthropogenic changes have large implications for the ecosystem and the global carbon cycle and climate. To monitor these changes, disentangle their effects from those caused by natural variability, and improve our mechanistic understanding of the ecosystem dynamics, we designed an observatory capable of continuously recording a broad suite of ecosystem variables in the northeastern Chukchi Sea Disentangle their effects from those caused by natural variability, and improve our mechanistic understanding of the ecosystem dynamics, we designed an observatory capable of continuously recording a broad suite of ecosystem variables in the northeastern Chukchi Sea (Figs. 2–4)
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