Project Team: Professor Martin Solan (Project Lead), Dr Jasmin Godbold, Thomas Williams, Rhiannon Jones
Project supported by the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute
The Arctic region is undergoing some of the most rapid rates of change in the world in response to climatic forcing, with dramatic transformations underway in the flora and fauna of coastal Arctic habitats that will affect many ecosystem properties and the delivery of ecosystem services.
Presently, the evidence base on how climate change is affecting marine Arctic ecosystems is based on 4200 publications that have largely been conducted in the western Arctic by investigators from the USA (29%), Norway (23%) and Canada (23%). The next strongest contributors to Arctic science are Russia (10%) and the UK (10%). Despite the proximity of these two countries, collaborations are rare (<3% of the Arctic literature base) and the eastern Arctic is woefully under-represented in international fora.
This project, led by Prof. Martin Solan, aims to connect considerable complementary expertise in Russia and the UK that has not previously been combined and utilised. In realizing this joint capability, there is genuine increased likelihood of stimulating world leading research through new synergies, which will be secured into the future by the establishment of a training network and a critical mass of researchers. The long term change we are hoping to achieve is a more holistic treatment of Arctic science and the advancement of current capability by integrating best practices from the portfolio of collective expertise.
As part of the project outputs, we have held three online workshops between 17 March and 19 March 2021 around the following topics:
- Session 1 – 17 March 2021; 10:00-13:00 (GMT): Ecological consequences of climate change over the Arctic
- Session 2 – 18 March 2021; 12:30-15:30 (GMT): Training network event on the design, set-up and statistical analysis of climate change and biodiversity experiments
- Session 3 – 19 March 2021; 10:00-12:00 (GMT): Development of collaborative research ideas
We are currently in the process of updating this page to reflect the outcomes of the discussions that took place during the workshops.
If you have any further queries, please contact Dr Wassim Dbouk: w.dbouk@soton.ac.uk