Research project IGV| Subpolar plankton invasions to the Arctic Ocean during warm mid-Pleistocene interglacials
The Arctic Ocean is warming at an alarming rate and Arctic sea ice extent is at an all-time low. How will these drastic changes impact future Arctic marine ecosystems and what are the ocean-climate driving mechanisms that we must look out for to warn of a future change?
To help us answer these questions we can look back in time using geological records to previous interglacial periods when the climate was likely warmer than today for natural reasons.
Project description
The ‘time-machine’ allowing us to look back into the geological past is sediment cores containing layers of mud and fossils taken from the Central Arctic Ocean sea floor. Extraordinary peaks in a genus of fossil planktonic foraminifera called Turborotalita, a group that is normally only found further south where there is no extensive sea ice, shows us that there have been times when the Arctic Ocean was significantly less ice-covered than Recent times allowing for a very different type of plankton community, with knock-on changes up the food chain.
Helen Coxall’s VR funded Project aims to both document these subpolar plankton invasions and, working with physical oceanographers, understand what factors in the ocean-climate system could have caused Arctic Ocean conditions to change so drastically. For example, did the Greenland Ice Sheet melt causing Arctic ocean circulation and climatology to change? Or were there major changes in the temperature and depth of water masses coming into the Arctic Ocean from the Atlantic and Pacific that changed the ecosystem?
The team working on the project is; post doc Flor Vermassen, supported by Matt O’Regan (co-I), who work directly with dating and correlating sediment cores and documenting fossil and living Arctic planktonic foraminifera; Masters student Tamara Handel, who is using fossil morphometric analysis to explore how planktonic foraminifera biodiversity increased during the subpolar invasions; Clare Bird (University of Stirling), a biologist who is analysing planktonic foraminifera diet and DNA to better understand the ecology of living polar and subpolar species. Physical oceanographer Agatha de Boer (co-I), together with her post doc Marie Sicard and PhD student Trusha, will help explore the oceanic causes of plankton changes through computer modelling experiments
Project members
Project managers
Helen Coxall
Professor of Marine micropaleontology
Members
Clare Bird
Lecturer in Molecular Cell Biology
Agatha de Boer
Professor of Physical paleoceanography
Tamara Handel
MSc student at Stockholm University
Matthew O'Regan
Professor of Marine geology
Flor Vermassen
Researcher
