July 2015. Thanks MicroPolar!
CarbonBridge wants to thank our fantastic “sister-project” MicroPolar for the organization of a successful mesocosm experiment in Ny Ålesund. We are very much looking forward to continue working together with you.
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July 2015. 12 minutes with Ban Ki-moon and Børge Brende
Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, visited Ny Ålesund in advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. Together with the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Børge Brende, Ban Ki-moon visited the laboratory facilities used by MicroPolar and CarbonBridge in conjunction with their experimental work in Ny Ålesund. During 12 minutes, Ban Ki-moon was introduced to the world of microbes. The Secretary-General showed special interest in the copepods shown to him.
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July 2015. CarbonBridge scientists in front of TV camera
Ingvill Warholm from Warholm Film (www.warholmfilm.no) and Kriss Rokkan Iversen from SALT (www.salt.nu) are joining the mesocosm experiment in Ny Ålesund, producing a documentary about marine microbes for the Norwegian TV channel NRK. As experts in front of the camera are scientists from MicroPolar and CarbonBridge explaining the structure and function of marine microbial communities and their importance to the World’s carbon cycle.
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June 2015. CarbonBridge contributes to MicroPolar’s mesocosm experiment
How does the competition for nutrients between phytoplankton and bacteria will change in a future Arctic Ocean influenced by increasing levels of dissolved organic matter running off from land? How do different concentrations of mesozooplankton influence the structure and function of the microbial food web? These are questions CarbonBridge’s sister project “MicroPolar” is addressing in a large scale mesocosm experiment in Ny Ålesund on Svalbard. In total 25 scientists are joining the campaign. CarbonBridge scientists, Camilla Svensen and Lena Seuthe, are part of the zooplankton team, investing micro- and mesozooplankton grazing, defecation and excretion rates.
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June 2015. French Masters thesis including acoustic data collected by CarbonBridge
Lia Siegelman, student at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (France), worked on the distribution of mesopelagic fauna in the Norwegian Sea for her Masters thesis. Supervised by Benjamin Planque from the Institute of Marine Research in Tromsø, Lia Siegelman analyzed acoustic data from different cruises in the Norwegian Sea and Fram Strait, among those data provided by CarbonBridge. Lia Siegelman was able to show that the biomass of mesopelagic fish is higher than earlier thought in the northern part of North Atlantic and its gateway to the Arctic.
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May 2015. CarbonBridge scientist Paul Wassmann on radio
CarbonBridge scientist Prof. Paul Wassmann talked about the effect of sea ice for life in the Arctic Ocean when the Norwegian radio program “EKKO – Abels Tårn” (http://radio.nrk.no/serie/ekko-hovedsending/MDSP25009215/08-05-2015#t=58m7s) was visiting Tromsø in the beginning of May. Together with Prof. Jørgen Bergen from UiT – The Arctic University of Tromsø, Paul Wassmann explained the importance of sea ice in determining the stratification of the water column, nutrient transport and subsequently marine productivity in the Arctic Ocean.
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March 2015. CarbonBridge contributes heavily to Gordon Research Conference
CarbonBridge senior scientist Paul Wassmann was chair of this years’ Gordon Research Conference on polar marine science (http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=12641). In the spirit of CarbonBridge the topic of this years’ GRC was “Polar Shelves and Shelf Break Exchange in Times of Rapid Climate Warming”. On the GRC, CarbonBridge was represented by 13 of its scientists, of which two invited speakers, and eight others contributing to the conference with posters.
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March 2015. A wealth of data – CarbonBridge meets in Italy
Half a year after the last CarbonBridge cruise, 22 project participants met in Italy to present and discuss first data from the 2014 field campaigns. Sample analysis are either completed or well on their way, and hence much of the discussion circled around the question how information should be combined and published. CarbonBridge aims at publishing its core work as a special volume in Frontiers in Marine Science (http://www.frontiersin.org/global_change_and_the_future_ocean) latest by the end of 2016.
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January 2015. CarbonBridge scientists present first results
During the scientific part of the Arctic Frontiers Conference in Tromsø, Norway (http://www.arcticfrontiers.com/2015-conference) CarbonBridge scientists presented first results from the CarbonBridge cruises in 2014.
Paul Wassmann (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway) talked about “The contiguous domains of Arctic Ocean advection: trails of life and Death”, where he demonstrated that the central Arctic Ocean is not isolated, but tightly connected to the northern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. In his review, Paul Wassmann presented information about the advection and fate of zooplankton in the Arctic Ocean, now and in the future. He characterised the various organism types that interact along the contiguous domains and showed how life derived from subarctic production regimes fuels life in the Arctic Ocean. Paul Wassmann concluded that the Arctic Ocean is, at least in some regions, a net heterotrophic ocean that – during the foreseeable trend towards global warming – will obtain an increased balance between local and advective production and consumption.
Sünnje Basedow (University of Nordland) presented CarbonBridge data on “Advection of Atlantic Water and secondary producers into the Arctic Ocean” together with Arild Sundfjord from the Norwegian Polar Institute. The two CarbonBridge scientists aim to quantify seasonal changes in the inflow of AW and the secondary producers contained therein. For that, data with high spatial resolution were collected along transects across the AW inflow west and north of Svalbard during the three CarbonBridge cruises in winter (January), spring (May) and summer (August) 2014. Water currents were measured along the transects using a ship-borne acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) while steaming, and a rosette mounted lowered-ADCP system at stations. Secondary producers were quantified using a laser optical plankton counter mounted on a moving vessel profiler while steaming and on a rosette frame at stations. Production was estimated based on biovolume spectrum theories, and advection of secondary production into the AO was then quantified by combining the high-resolution current and zooplankton data.
Lena Seuthe (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway) talked about “Patterns and drivers of bacterial production in the marginal ice zone northwest of Svalbard”, where she investigated the link between phytoplankton and bacteria in the area studied. Some of the preliminary conclusions are that while bacterial abundance reacts to changes in phytoplankton stock size similar to what is in other areas of the World’s ocean, bacterial production does not increase as fast With increasing primary production as seen in more temperate areas.
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December 2014. First scientific results from CarbonBridge presented
Maria Vernet from the Scrippts Institution of Oceanography, US presented first results from the CarbonBridge cruises during the “Arctic Change Conference” in Ottawa, Canada (http://www.arcticnetmeetings.ca/ac2014/). Under the title ” Coupling of phytoplankton and bacteria production in Atlantic waters west of Svalbard”, Maria Vernet showed rate measurements of both phytoplankton and bacterial growth. Rates of primary production were high both in May and August. Bacterial production was positively correlated with phytoplankton stocks and production rates, but was relatively low in both seasons.
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October 2014. CarbonBridge meets high school pupils
CarbonBridge post docs Elisabeth Halvorsen and Lena Seuthe met high school pupils and talked with them about whether a future ice-free Arctic Ocean could sustain commercial fish stocks. One of the main ideas for the meeting was to give the pupils an understanding of the complexity of marine systems, and why it is not always possible for scientist to give simple and final answers to questions of large socialtial interest.
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August 2014. CarbonBridge completes it’s field season with a third cruise
CarbonBridge completed it’s field season with a third cruise to the waters northwest of Spitsbergen. As in May, dense sea ice prohibited RV Helmer Hanssen from reaching CarbonBridge’s main study area northeast of the Svalbard Archipelago. Nevertheless, all 26 scientists om board were able to gather the samples and data they needed during three 24 hour long process stations and along three oceanographic transects. Now many hundreds to thousands of samples are waiting to be analysed.
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June 2014. Second CarbonBridge cruise successfully completed
CarbonBridge just returned from its’ second cruise to the waters around Svalbard. CarbonBridge aimed at studying physical and biological processes west and north of the Svalbard Archipelago. Dense sea ice prohibited however the research vessel RV Helmer Hanssen from reaching the northern flank, and CarbonBridge was bound to work off the northwest coast of Spitsbergen. Three oceanographic transects were run across the West Spitsbergen Current, transporting warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean. Much effort was put into not only describing the physical properties of the Atlantic water, but also its chemical composition and the zooplankton community advected into the Arctic by this water mass. For this purpose, CarbonBridge used an laser optical plankton counter in combination with a CTD sonde mounted on a moving vessel profiler along all transects.
In addition to the transect work, CarbonBridge conducted three process station in the marginal ice zone around the southern flank of the Yermark Plateau. At the process stations the pelagic community, from viruses to copepods, was studied in detail. Extensive experiments were run to investigate prevailing trophic structures and estimate primary and secondary production. At all three stations, an intensive phytoplankton bloom scenario was encountered, with chlorophyll concentrations of up to 25 µg/L.
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May 2014. CarbonBridge celebrates the Norwegian national day in the ice
CarbonBridge left Longyearbyen onboard RV Helmer Hanssen May 15 for its second cruise. For three week 27 scientists from seven nations will investigate the physicochemical and biological structure of the water masses west and north of the Svalbard Archipelago. Tons of equipment are with us on board to allow to investigate in detail all kinds of planktonic organisms, from viruses to mesozooplankton.
On May 17 CarbonBridge celebrated the Norwegian national day in its traditional way by eating far too much ice cream, waving flags and singing some happy songs.
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March 2014. CarbonBridge’s sister project MicroPolar successfully completed it’s firts cruise
CarbonBridge’s sister project “MicroPolar” successfully completed it’s first cruise March 11, following the northern transect of the CarbonBridge cruise in January this year. The projects are tightly linked, and uses each others cruises to describe a complete seasonal cycle in plankton dynamics in the water masses north off Svalbard.
Learn more about the work of MicroPolar through the cruise blogg and facebook page.
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January 2014. CarbonBridge completes its first cruise with great success
CarbonBridge’s first cruise aimed at studying the physical and biochemical properties of Atlantic water flowing into the Arctic Ocean during winter. Two oceanographic transects west and north of the Svalbard Archipelago were sampled for water mass characteristics, such as temperature, salinity, nutrients, inorganic and organic carbon compounds, as well as zooplankton distribution and composition in the beginning of January 2014.
In addition to the mapping of water masses, experiments on planktonic organisms, ranging from bacteria to large copepods, were conducted on board to investigate trophic interactions and metabolic processes of planktonic organisms during the darkest period of the year.
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November 2013. CarbonBridge scientist conducting Arctic research in southern California
Camilla Svensen, a ”work-package”-leader on CarbonBridge and associate professor in zooplankton ecology at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, has recently shifted address from the high North to southern California.
As a Fulbright Arctic Chair 2013/2014, Camilla will spend 7 months as a guest researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanology (SIO) in San Diego. Fulbright (www.fulbright.com) is an organization aiming to facilitate scientific, educational and cultural exchange between the US and numerous other countries. The Arctic Chair Award is available for researchers working with Arctic issues.
During her stay at SIO, Camilla will collaborate with Dr. Maria Vernet on investigating production of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from Oithona feeding on dinoflagellates. Oithona is a small cyclopoid copepod present in large abundances worldwide, but their role in the carbon cycle is not well defined. The methods developed at SIO will also be relevant for continued investigation of Oithona and other zooplankton species in Arctic ecosystems. Moreover, as part of the Fulbright project Camilla will give lectures and communicate arctic research at SIO and other US institutions. She is blogging about her scientific and cultural experiences at www.sciencenordic.com.
The project has previously received attention at www.forskning.no (in Norwegian):
http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2013/mai/357206
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October 2013. Kick-off meeting of CarbonBridge’s sister project “MicroPolar”
CarbonBridge was part of the initiation of the research project “MicroPolar [µP]: Processes and Players in Arctic Marine Pelagic Food Webs – Biogeochemistry, Environment and Climate Change” at the University of Bergen in the beginning of October 2013. MicroPolar focuses on the diversity and ecological significance of microbes in Arctic waters, and their influence on biogeochemical cycles. CarbonBridge and MicroPolar were both funded by the Norwegian Research Council in spring 2013 and will share much of their field work around Svalbard in 2014.
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September 2013. CarbonBridge kick-off meeting
CarbonBridge was officially started at the historical site Skansen in Tromsø the last week of September 2013. CarbonBridge has a strong international component, and among the 25 meeting participants eight nations were presented. Following a presentation of the holistic idea and specific tasks of the project, the practical work started. We planned cooperation and communication around existing time series, utilization of different model types, and practical issues related to the upcoming fieldwork. We look forward to a project with great people, good science and lots of fun.
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August 2013. CarbonBridge has gotten a logo
The project has gotten its logo! The project’s name “CarbonBridge” is a metaphore for the carbon and other nutrients transported into the Arctic Ocean with Atlantic water masses. Quantifying this transport is one of the goals of CarbonBridge. The arrow in the project’s logo stands therefore for the inflow of Atlantic water into the Arctic, depicted by the ice flow entering the logo from the right.