Biodiversity of marine benthos: perspective from a global change

The impacts of pronounced climate change are now apparent at various sites in the Subarctic and Arctic, and numerical simulation models converge on the prediction that future warming trends will be amplified at high northern latitudes. There is therefore an immediate and pressing need to develop a fundamental understanding of Norway?s northern marine ecosystems and their responsiveness to environmental change. The benthic biodiversity has been hypothesized to be closely related with variables such as prod uctivity (primary production) and sea surface temperature for which a strong gradient is seen along the Norwegian coastal shelf. These two biodiversity drivers are highly climate-dependent and are expected to change with the predicted warming. This fundin g request is for a Post-doctoral fellowship grant to conduct fundamental research on marine benthos with a focus on characterizing the properties of benthic biodiversity measurements at various latitudinal sites throughout the Norwegian coastal shelf. We will tackle this objective using historical and recent existing datasets at various spatial scales, and will develop theoretical framework of the impacts of the global warming on the soft-bottom marine biodiversity in the Norwegian continental shelf.