PNAS Perspective on Arctic Ocean productivity
Our Perspective paper entitled ‘Seafloor primary production in a changing Arctic Ocean’ was published in PNAS on March 4th 2024.
This paper brought together a large and multidisciplinary team of leading international researchers to explore sunlight availability and photosynthetic production occurring on the elusive Arctic seafloor.
We reviewed literature & developed novel model to constrain benthic sunlight availability and photosynthesis rates. We compare production by seafloor microalgae, seaweeds, and seagrasses to other known sources while highlighting key knowledge gaps to focus future research.
We explored the importance of seaweeds, seagrasses, and microalgae for Arctic Ocean primary production
We discovered that over the past 20 yr, the sunlit region of the Arctic seafloor has been expanding by ca. 47000 km2 per year. However, this is not occurring equally across the Arctic; water transparency is decreasing in many regions.
Water transparency is decreasing in many regions of the Arctic Ocean (Photo: Karl Attard)
Despite complex effects of climate change on sunlight availability and marine photosynthesis, we estimate a contribution from the benthos of 77 Tg C yr-1 i.e. approx one-fifth of phytoplankton production and four times larger than sea ice algae production.
This Perspective raises more questions than it answers. Simple measures like Arctic Ocean depth and substrate type remain scarce. Understanding complex biological processes occurring against a backdrop of rapid environmental change might seem like an insurmountable task... But we’re up for the challenge!
Link to PNAS paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2303366121?af=R
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