2017-18 NPRB Biennial Report

Ecosystem monitoring through a year-round mooring array in the northeast Chukchi Sea NPRB contributes funding to the deployment of a subsur- face mooring array on the Northeast Chukchi Sea shelf. This mooring array records continuously throughout the year, providing data in under-sampled and poorly under- stood seasons when sea ice inhibits ship-based sampling. Instruments record information about the physical and chemical properties of the water column, nutrients and particulate matter, plankton, and fish. This mooring array provides important data on ocean acidification, nutrient and carbon cycles, and wind, waves, and ice. These data are providing unprecedented insights into the mechanistic processes operating in the Chukchi shelf ecosystem and providing baseline datasets for climate studies and model validations. https://www.uaf.edu/cfos/research/projects/ ne-chukchi-sea-moored-eco/

The North Pacific Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey is a ship-of-opportunity monitoring program that uses commercial ships to collect samples of phytoplankton and zooplankton, as well as some aspects of the physical environment, along their regular routes of passage on a seasonal basis. Phytoplankton and zooplankton respond rapidly to changes in their environment and thus pass the influence of this variability via the food chain to higher trophic levels such as fish, seabirds, and marine mammals that have economic and cultural value for society. CPR data have been collected in the North Pacific since 2000, and NPRB’s renewed commitment will provide continued funding through 2023. https://www.pices.int/projects/tcprsotnp/main.aspx

Measuring the pulse of the Gulf of Alaska: Oceanographic observations along the Seward Line In an effort to understand the response of the marine ecosystem to climate variability, scientists have been monitoring physics, chemistry, phytoplankton, microzooplankton, metazooplankton, seabird, and marine mammal communities during spring (May) and late summer (September) at a series of oceanographic stations known as the Seward Line for the past 21 years. Recently, National Science Foundation joined the funding consortium and established the Seward Line as a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, expanding the scientific scope and geographic extent of the sampling and adding cruises in summer (July). https://nga.lternet.edu/

19

2 0 1 7 – 2 0 1 8 B I E N N I A L R E P O R T

Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker