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EVITA-eVitenskap

Understanding Coral Distribution and conditions for growth in Norwegian waters

Tildelt: kr 7,7 mill.

Prosjektnummer:

176874

Søknadstype:

Prosjektperiode:

2007 - 2011

Midlene er mottatt fra:

In recent years it has been documented that deep-water coral reefs of the species Lophelia pertusa are a major benthic habitat in Norwegian waters. However, basic information about the biology and ecology of this species is still unknown. Lophelia live an d thrive under special environmental conditions of which factors such as temperature, water depth, water movement and food supply are important. In an earlier work, a numerical terrain following ocean model was used to identify the shelf break as a suita ble place for corals to settle due to the current regime set up by the large scale forcing, e.g. the along slope currents and the atmospheric forcing. Simple methods were used to quantify the food brought to the shelf break in this model. The model used ( Bergen Ocean Model (BOM)) was run under the hydrostatic assumption. The proposed project aims to continue this work and develop better methods for implementing food particles in the model and also transport of the food particles, on small scale (grid res olution of 0.1-10m) under the non-hydrostatic assumption. In such a study it is essential that the model is terrain following and non-hydrostatic since such a model can resolve the currents close to the seabed, currents which are important for where the particles will enter the benthic layer where the corals can catch them. The project intend to further develop the good collaboration already established between the Benthic Habitat Research Group and the Oceanography and Climate Research Group at the Ins titute of Marine Research (IMR), Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bergen (UiB), and the Bergen Center for Computational Science (BCCS). The developed methods will be made publicly available through a dedicated web page.

Budsjettformål:

EVITA-eVitenskap