24 students awarded to participate at the Acidification Workshop in Tromsø on 27 and 29 September 2011

In the frame of the Acidification Workshop in Tromsø on 27 and 29 September 2011, 24 PhD students have been awarded to meet and discuss on their ocean acidification project with the lecturers and other workshop participants. The PhD students present a huge international background since they will come from different part of the world (China, India, Brazil, Europe, USA, Canada….). Within the workshop they will get chance to participate at several round tables focused on the ocean acidification methodological weaknesses and knowledge gaps. The 24 students will take part at the “Idea fertilization student poster session” focus on what they are planning to do in the future (developing their research plan) rather than on what they have already done. The poster themes will be related to the main workshop themes (encompassing biogeochemistry, biology and socioeconomics aspects). Because of the significance of economic assessment in motivating policy change with regard to climate change issues, there is an increasing necessity to improve the dialogue between science and economics. In this frame during the last day of the workshop, the PhD students will be involved in the “Student panel session: The socioeconomic costs of ocean acidification”. Here, summing up the information gained during the workshop, they will try to formulate suggestions to improve the evaluation of economic costs resulting from ocean acidification. Dialogue and discussion during the panel session will be stimulated by the presence of experts from both economics and marine science.

The effects of ocean acidification on demersal zooplankton in coral reefs: Using natural CO2 seeps in Papua New Guinea as a window into the future

Mobility

• Host institute 1: P2 – Universität Bremen
• Host institute 2: P7 – University of Plymouth

Research fields:

• T1 – Future Oceans: temperature changes – hypoxia – acidifation
• T2 – Understanding biodiversity effects on the functioning of marine ecosystems

Subject description

Streams of CO2 bubbles naturally emerge from the shallow coral reefs in eastern Papua New Guinea (Fabricius et al. 2011). They offer the opportunity for an exiting PhD Project to observe the effects of elevated seawater CO2 levels on the composition and food web dynamics of demersal zooplankton, providing an insight into how rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations may impact reef associated zooplankton communities in 50-100 years time.

In eastern Papua, three natural volcanic vent fields release gas bubbles of nearly pure CO2, providing natural gradients in pH from ambient waters away from the seeps (8.1 units) down to pH ~7.2 units in the center of these seep areas. Along the pH gradients, carbonates in sediments, calcareous algae and the structurally complex corals increase in abundance (Fabricius et al. 2011). A similar shallow site near the island Ischia in the Mediterranean has been instrumental in confirming concerns that sustained elevated levels of seawater CO2 have a negative impact on the condition and in fact on the presence or absence of calcifying species (Hall-Spencer et al. 2008).