[A-OS13] Marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles: theory, observation and modeling

[AOS13-P01] Natural and anthropogenic pressures on the Arctic Marine Ecosystems

*Takafumi Hirata¹, Keiko Sato¹, Ireen Alabia¹, Jorge García-Molinos¹, Hiromichi Ueno¹, EIJI WATANABE² (1.Hokkaido University, 2.Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology)

Keywords:Marine Ecosystems, Arctic, Planetary Boundaries

Recent changes in the Arctic marine environment, as represented by the drastic decrease of sea ice for example, are expected to result in an increase of human activities in the region for natural resource exploitation, northern sea route shipping and so on. In such a circumstance, the present marine ecosystems and their services in the Arctic may be deteriorated from both the natural and anthropogenic pressures, and directly or indirectly. When it comes to a sustainable use of the Arctic region under Anthropocene, ecosystem vulnerability against these pressures, especially from relatively new and increased pressures from human activities, needs to be assessed to take a practical adaptation and/or possible mitigation strategies to avoid irreversible and unmanageable changes of the present ecosystem services. This work aims to ultimately develop a metric(s) for the assessment of the marine ecosystem vulnerability in the Arctic. Given the fact that human activities also depend on the natural environment and human beings themselves need to bear the environmental pressure (i.e., they are parts of the ecosystems), we introduce the concept of Planetary Boundaries into the ecosystem assessment. Our specific objectives here are to investigate (i) how multiple phenomena of natural environment defined in the planetary boundaries have influenced the Arctic region so far, (ii) how marine ecosystems have been responded to such natural pressures, and (iii) how anthropogenic activities such as shipping possibly could have influenced the marine ecosystems.