Successful PRiS-workshop at UNIS

Plankton investigations in Svalbard waters have a long tradition, but so far, no long-term monitoring plankton program has been jointly coordinated among the institutions and nations that regularly conduct plankton surveys in Svalbard. To secure long consistent time series – which is crucial to document potential climate change impacts on Arctic marine ecosystems – a 2-day workshop with focus on Plankton Research in Svalbard (PRiS; funded by Svalbard Science Forum) took place at UNIS 8-10 December.

Around 40 scientists from Poland, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Norway came together to discuss how to best monitor plankton dynamics in the coming years and decades to detect potential climate change impacts on these tiny, but very important organisms that form the basis of the marine food web. Many important tasks were on the workshop agenda such as:

1) which geographical sites should be prioritized,

2) standardized sampling protocol,

3) best time of the year for sampling and sample frequency, and

4) data management.

In addition, new technologies were discussed to evaluate the potential for gaining data with less labor-intensive methods. Regular plankton research in Svalbard is primarily conducted in West-Spitsbergen (see map), and the main institutions involved are the Institute of Oceanology Polish Academy of Sciences (IOPAS), the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Germany, the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS).

All participants agreed upon the importance of continuing the plankton surveys in West-Spitsbergen, which started in the early 90ties, but these data need to be secured better and become available in searchable databases. From the north of Svalbard (Rijpfjorden) mooring and plankton data have been available since 2006, but reference data from eastern Svalbard are largely missing. However, zooplankton samplings have been done there as a part of several research cruises. Rijpfjorden and Kongsfjorden (see map) are used as model systems for “cold” and “warm” fjord systems in Svalbard, related to climate change. The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), UiT the Arctic University of Norway and Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) maintain seasonal plankton and mooring time series in Rijpfjorden and Kongsfjorden (www.mare-incognitum.no), and the Norwegian Polar Institute conducts annual transect surveys there in July (http://www.mosj.no).

Due to the unique placement, UNIS also runs a high-resolution plankton time series in Adventfjorden (sampled bi-weekly to monthly since 2011), and this year (2015) a new Norwegian-Russian monitoring project “Isfjorden Marine Observatory System (IMOS)” led by UNIS in close cooperation with the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute (MMBI) has been initiated. UNIS researchers are presently working to establish an “online weather station at sea” so that scientists, ship traffic, tourist business and the public can access current sea water temperature, salinity and algal plankton biomass online. Water temperature in Isfjorden measured in early December during the winter IMOS cruise onboard the Russian research vessel Dalnie Zelentsy were between 2-3 °C from surface to 250 m depth, suggesting that sea ice will likely not form until extended periods of cold and calm weather. Close to the glacial fronts in Tempelfjorden and Billefjorden, however, temperatures were close to zero degrees. The main conclusions and recommendations agreed upon during the 2-days intensive PRiS workshop are currently being written up and the final outcome will be a White Document with guidelines and recommendations for a joint international plankton-monitoring program in Svalbard.

Text: Janne Søreide