Styrking av tverrfaglig klimarelatert marin forskning i Norge

StyrkeNor activities have been arranged to strengthen interdisciplinary climate-related marine research connected to our EU project "Ocean Food-web Patrol - Climate Effects: Reducing Targeted uncertainties with an Interactive Network" OCEAN-CERTAIN which has been coordinated by NTNU. The marine food web is at the center of both the climate-related CO2 cycle and food production in the marine environment. It plays a key role in regulating the climate system and is highly sensitive to climate change and other stressors. We studied the impacts of the climatic and non-climatic stressors and how these alter the functionality and structure of the food web (FW) and efficiency of the biological pump (BP) in different bio-geographical regions, in the Arctic waters, Patagonian Marine system and Mediterranean Sea. We are studying to answer the questions that how --the changes in the microbial food web due to the impacts of various climatic and non-climatic stressors will have effects on the carbon export from surface to deep waters, --this export will control the CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere and, --we can reduce the existing uncertainties related to the changes in the food-web, their effects on the biological carbon export and their role as climatic feed-backs We claim that it should be possible to estimate the strength of the BP if we know the food web state in the euphotic ecosystem. We are studying the biogeochemical journey of the organic carbon, how Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) the dominant fraction of the organic carbon transform from one forms to others and how much of these DOC prone to the bacterial decomposition (labile DOC for bacterial consumption). If we assemble knowledge on the characterization of organic carbon and their transformation pathways in the deep water, we will have a good answer to the question of how much of exported organic carbon will be transformed back into CO2 and how much of it will be stored in deep-sea and sediment for a long period. The storage capacity and length of storage time of organic carbon in the deep-water and sediment are important for controlling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere; The oceanic process we described briefly above is a Natural Carbon Capture and Storage (N-CCS) mechanism. I if the Natural Carbon Capture and Storage mechanism is disturbed by climatic and non-climatic stressors, and if it becomes weaker, this may result in a serious reduction in the removal of CO2 by the Ocean, and have crucial negative consequences for global warming due to the greenhouse effect and ocean acidification due to accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere. Integration of the processes of the natural and socio-economic systems and interdisciplinary character of the study The project used experimental approaches, field studies, and modelling to analyse the interactions between stressors/drivers, microbial ecosystem structure and functions. Ocean-Certain Project is a pioneer in integrating natural, socio-economic and cultural drivers into the study of the socio-ecological system. This has been done by utilizing existing ecosystem models employing existing data, by using computational method, literature-based knowledge discovery (LBKD), in addition to mesocosm and field study. The resulting knowledge has been used to assess socio-economic vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity by using indicators of food-web functions as responses to particular changes by way of stressor combinations. Then we explore adaptive capacity and address socio-economic policy and management issues by using highly interactive participatory stakeholder workshops to create models of user group resilience and adaptability to form the basis for the design of an integrated Decision Support System (DSS). Social stressors or drivers have usually not been truly incorporated into the conceptual models of environmental and ecological changes. We therefore started integration of natural and social science from the beginning, while we were preparing the proposal. In the specific consilience and integration work package, we described problems and concepts together by close collaboration of closely and distantly-related disciplines to overcome existing obstruction between the disciplines by developing an approach to environmental and ecological problems. We build a trans-disciplinary project which crosses also the boundaries between academic and non-academic world to understand the impact of all stressors, natural or social, to the socio-ecological system. Our project is a forerunner in the involvement of Artificial Intelligence in marine science; We initiated a Literature Based Knowledge Discovery (LBKD) method, a novel approach that will allow the automatic extraction of information from large amounts of text. LBKD has been developed specifically to uncover hidden relations in existing scientific literature across many of the fields and disciplines involved in the project. .

StyrkNor er knyttet til EU prosjektet "Ocean Food-web Patrol, Climate Effects: Reducing Targeted Uncertainties with an Interactive Network", OCEAN-CERTAIN, som NTNU koordinerer. OCEAN-CERTAIN vil påvise og kvantifisere effekten av sammensatte påvirkningsfaktorer og tilbakemeldinger (feedback) og vise hvordan disse endrer funksjonalitet og oppbygningen av næringsnett og effektiviteten til den biologiske pumpen i ulike biogeografiske regioner, i Arktiske farvann, Patagonske havsystemet og Middelhavet. Dette vil gjøres ved å ta i bruk eksisterende modeller for økosystemer, litteraturbasert kunnskapsutvinning ved hjelp av kunstig intelligens, i tillegg til etablering av mesokosmos, laboratorieeksperimenter og feltstudier. OCEAN-CERTAIN vil så ta for seg sosioøkonomisk politikk og ledelsesproblematikk ved å benytte interaktive workshops for deltakende interessentgrupper. StyrkNor har ambisjoner om å forsterke klimarelatert marin forskning i Norge. Prosjektet vil samle et nasjonalt forskningsteam som er blanding av etablerte forskere fra flere disipliner som jobber mer eller mindre isolert fra hverandre per i dag, og unge forskere. Det vil legges en spesiell vekt til rekruttering av unge forskere ved å gjøre dem kjent med og involvere dem i OCEAN CERTAIN prosjektet. Disse skal oppnås gjennom i) 4 internasjonale workshoper i Norge, ii) deltagelse av unge og erfarne forskere sammen i strategisk viktige internasjonale forskningsaktiviteter og iii) spesielle dissemineringsaktiviteter med konferansedeltagelse og multimedia-web aktivitet. De 4 workshoper i Norge sikter på styrking av flerfaglig klimarelatert marin forskning i Norge, styrking av de samfunnsvitenskapelige og humanistiske komponentene til det marine forskningsmiljøet, styrking av sosioøkonomisk ekspertise i Trondheim og sammenknytning av forskningsmiljøene i Trondheim og Tromsø, og styrking av kunstig intelligens forskning for teknologisk støtte til klimarelatert marin forskning.