Arctic sea ice is leaving us. We didn’t taken good enough care of it when we had it and it may be too late to convince it to stay. Over the coming decades the specific effects of decreasing sea ice cover will become more apparent. One effect that has not gotten much attention since its discovery in 2011, is the growing phytoplankton blooms under the thinning ice sheets. Phytoplankton require sunlight to grow, and the increased thinning of sea-ice allows for more light transmission through the ice, where the blooms of plankton can grow quickly and more frequently than before. This is a drastic change from the ‘normal’ conditions where sea ice was thicker and reflected the solar rays, having a much a higher albedo than today. “Evidence suggests that under-ice phytoplankton blooms may be more widespread over nutrient-rich Arctic continental shelves and that satellite-based estimates of annual primary production in these waters may be underestimated by up to 10-fold” So what does this mean for the Arctic ecosystem? Phytoplankton has always been an important part to the Arctic ecosystem, however, this change in timing of when the blooms grow and their extent is going to impact the aquatic food web. The large blooms will disrupt animal’s feeding cycles and cause a lot of havoc on the already vulnerable ecosystem. Such a quick change in environment is extremely difficult to adapt to, many species cannot tolerate such a rapid change in their food web, therefore there is a risk that we will see a decline in some species There is the hope that an increase in phytoplankton will allow new species to thrive by having more access to food under the ice. There are still many unknowns such as the extent of the blooms and the full repercussions of their impacts on the Arctic food web is still yet to be seen.
https://www.seeker.com/earth/thinning-arctic-ice-is-breeding-dangerous-phytoplankton-blooms http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6087/1408 http://globalnews.ca/news/3345848/arctic-sea-ice-phytoplankton-food-chain/
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorsJust two water lovers exploring todays water issues. Archives
July 2017
Categories |