Abundance, biomass and secondary production of benthic megafauna on the Barents Sea shelf in 2008 and 2009

DOI

Megabenthos plays a major role in the overall energy flow on Arctic shelves, but information on megabenthic secondary production on large spatial scales is scarce. Here, we estimated for the first time megabenthic secondary production for the entire Barents Sea shelf by applying a species-based empirical model to an extensive dataset from the joint Norwegian- Russian ecosystem survey. Spatial patterns and relationships were analyzed within a GIS. The environmental drivers behind the observed production pattern were identified by applying an ordinary least squares regression model. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) was used to examine the varying relationship of secondary production and the environment on a shelfwide scale. Significantly higher megabenthic secondary production was found in the northeastern, seasonally ice-covered regions of the Barents Sea than in the permanently ice-free southwest. The environmental parameters that significantly relate to the observed pattern are bottom temperature and salinity, sea ice cover, new primary production, trawling pressure, and bottom current speed. The GWR proved to be a versatile tool for analyzing the regionally varying relationships of benthic secondary production and its environmental drivers (R² = 0.73). The observed pattern indicates tight pelagic- benthic coupling in the realm of the productive marginal ice zone. Ongoing decrease of winter sea ice extent and the associated poleward movement of the seasonal ice edge point towards a distinct decline of benthic secondary production in the northeastern Barents Sea in the future.

The dataset contains trawl data and environmental information from 398 stations sampled during the joint Norwegian-Russian Barents Sea Ecosystem Survey in 2008 and 2009. Megafauna was sampled with a Campelen 1800 bottom trawl. Here secondary production (mg carbon/m²/a) per station are given. The environmental information includes water depth (m), bottom water temperature (°C), salinity (psu), currents speed, standard deviation of sea ice concentration, and information about the sediment structure and the intensity of commercial trawling.

Supplement to: Degen, Renate; Jørgensen, Lis Lindal; Ljubin, Pavel; Ellingsen, Ingrid H; Pehlke, Hendrik; Brey, Thomas (2016): Patterns and drivers of megabenthic secondary production on the Barents Sea shelf. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 546, 1-16

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.857279
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.3354/meps11662
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.857279
Provenance
Creator Degen, Renate ORCID logo; Jørgensen, Lis Lindal; Ljubin, Pavel; Ellingsen, Ingrid H; Pehlke, Hendrik ORCID logo; Brey, Thomas ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2016
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 398 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (8.897W, 68.467S, 75.877E, 82.050N); Norwegian Sea; Barents Sea; Arctic Ocean; North Greenland Sea; Kara Sea
Temporal Coverage Begin 2008-06-30T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2009-06-30T00:00:00Z