Barents Sea Ecosystem Resilience under global environmental change

The influence of climate warming on the Barents Sea ecosystem is documented by the long-term ocean temperature increase observed since the 1960s and the projected increases of up to 3°C by 2050. The impact of climate warming on Barents Sea communities can be exacerbated by fisheries. The project addresses the effects of climate warming on the structure, dynamics and resilience of the Barents Sea ecosystem, integrated with the effect of fishery. Detection and forecasting of changes in ecosystem resilience and robustness under global warming and fisheries will be based on a broad battery of inferential tools including multivariate analyses of spatio-temporal changes in community structure, retrospective and prospective modelling of populations distributions , mapping of life history and feeding traits affecting species vulnerability, analysis of trophic interactions and food web structure, and early warning signals of abrupt changes detecting reductions in ecosystem resilience. The main outputs of the projec t, including a vulnerable species list, mapping of future populations distributions under warming scenarios, characterization of regime shifts, reliable early warning signals of abrupt ecosystem changes, provide tools needed for management of the Barents Sea ecosystem under global environmental change.