Building and enabling UK-Russian research capacity to address climate change effects on Arctic marine ecosystems

Project Team: Professor Martin Solan (Project Lead), Dr Jasmin Godbold , Thomas Williams , Rhiannon Jones

Project supported by the 天发娱乐棋牌_天发娱乐APP-官网|下载 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

Read the project's Policy Brief in Russian Read the project's Policy Brief in English

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