Benthic Indicators for Monitoring the Ecosystem of the Barents Sea

The project synthesizes and integrates research data produced in recent years as a basis for the selection and further development of benthic indicator organisms for the monitoring of contaminants and biodiversity in the Barents Sea. These will be complim ented by research on baseline variations in the levels of biologically relevant endpoints (biomarkers) and contaminants in selected indicator organisms. A secondary objective will be to examine linkages between environmental exposure and effects for PAHs in selected indicators. Biodiversity indicators will be developed by applying a number of classical interpretation methods to examine recent trends in newly acquired benthic biodiversity data sets of the Barents Sea. The results provide the best available scientific basis for proposing appropriate indicators and to establish a baseline that is unrelated to petroleum industry activities. These results will serve as a knowledge basis for evaluating how ecological differences between the Barents and North/No rwegian Seas are relevant for adapting on-going monitoring programs to the Barents Sea. These findings will then be assessed within the context of a changing Barents Sea, examining climate-related ecosystem changes and petroleum industry activities in the region for the coming decades. This will provide information to evaluate how future changes may affect the validity of indicators developed for the present day Barents Sea. In this way, ECOBAR will achieve a set of benthic indicators with maximum flexib ility and validity for assessing the present day and future health status of a changing Barents Sea. ECOBAR is only achievable through synergistic linkages to several on-going and recently completed research projects on the Barents Sea ecosystem which are led by or have significant participation by scientists from ECOBAR.