This time last week BIOPOLE community gathered for the Annual Science Meeting at Northumbria University in the lively city of Newcastle upon Tyne. Thank you to every single one of you who joined the meeting virtually or in-person!
The meeting lasted for three days and was full of exciting and interesting presentations delivered by project members, project partners, and stakeholders (the BIOPOLE community). Thank you all for taking the time and sharing your knowledge and invaluable expertise!
BIOPOLE Annual Science Meeting in Newcastle was a success due to everyone’s involvement. The poster sessions, breakout groups, and plenary discussions were all very interesting and productive. Thanks also to the Programme Advisory Board for their important feedback.
We are eager to implementing the suggested changes, actioning the feedback, and distributing outcomes of the breakout and plenary discussions, kindly collated by the rapporteurs, to the BIOPOLE community.
BIOPOLE is also very grateful to organisers who supported us in such a brilliant venue at Northumbria University!
We are looking forward to doing it all again around this time next year in Cambridge!
In my PhD I use satellites to study trends in Arctic sea ice thickness, and investigate how these changes will impact climate, ecosystems, and the economy. In particular I use satellite altimetry to measure the elevation of sea ice, which can be converted to estimates of sea ice thickness. In BIOPOLE, my role is to provide sea ice data and particularly sea ice thickness estimates. Currently I also represent the ECRs on the Executive Board and help to maximise engagement with BIOPOLE ECRs.
Outside of my PhD, I love scuba diving and am always trying to save up for my next trip! I’m originally from Southwest England but have loved living in Yorkshire for the past 5 years, having done my undergraduate and master’s degrees in Sheffield. Living so close to the Peak District has really developed my love for hiking and I go as often as I can.
Chelsey Baker
I am an early career researcher working in the Marine Systems Modelling group at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. I have a background in observational marine biogeochemistry and switched to marine biogeochemical modelling after my PhD. My main interests are focused on the global carbon cycle, with a specialist interest in the Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, and long-term carbon sequestration and how it may shift under future climatic changes. My research within the BIOPOLE project is focused on three main strands:
Analysing IPCC class models to investigate how primary production and nutrient fluxes from the polar regions changes in future centuries.
Undertaking high-resolution particle-tracking model simulations to determine how nutrient pathways might change out to 2100.
Undertaking high-resolution particle-tracking model simulations to determine the fate of carbon transported by the seasonal migration of high-latitude zooplankton to the interior ocean.
I am excited to get stuck into these various scientific questions throughout BIOPOLE and hope to help increase of understanding of the sensitivity of the nutrients in the polar regions to climatic changes.
Outside of work I enjoy spending my time reading, gardening, and spending time outdoors.
Jen Freer
I am an early career researcher working within the Ecosystems Team at the British Antarctic Survey. As Ecosystem Modeller, part of my job involves bringing together multiple types of data, from oceanographic (such as sea temperature) to biological (where a species is found for example). Using these data within models can help us to understand the factors driving species distributions and abundances, how these biological processes contribute to ecosystem function, and how environmental change may impact them.
For BIOPOLE, colleagues and I will collect specimens of small zooplankton species (mainly copepod crustaceans) and use statistical models to map their distribution in the Southern Ocean. Knowing their preferred location and depth during both summer and winter is really important information for modellers to be able to predict how much carbon they help sequester into the deep ocean. We will also team up with colleagues who study the seafloor to look at how the overwintering population of copepods overlap with the distribution of organisms living on the seabed, as these interactions are poorly understood.
The aims and objectives of BIOPOLE necessitate a truly interdisciplinary team of researchers which I am really excited to be a part of. When not in the office I am happiest on or by the sea, so in my free time I make as many trips to the coast as possible to surf, swim or stroll!
Anne Braakmann-Folgmann
I am a final year PhD student with the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds. My work focuses on satellite remote sensing of icebergs. Giant icebergs hold vast amounts of ice together with terrigenous nutrients and can drift for multiple years before they disintegrate. Therefore, the goal of my PhD is to quantify where how much freshwater is released into the Southern Ocean from giant icebergs.
Within the BIOPOLE project my role is to contribute these estimates of iceberg freshwater flux. I am excited to collaborate with a wide range of researchers in this project and to learn more about the impact that icebergs have on their environment.
In my free time I like to go climbing and enjoy walks out in nature – especially by the coast.
One major question in BIOPOLE is whether nutrient delivery from land-based sources is sensitive to climate change? If nutrient loading changes in a warmer world, and importantly, the balance of nutrients entering the sea changes, then the impacts on polar marine ecosystems could be profound. To answer this question requires our research team to track nutrients as they travel from headlands, glacial meltwaters, through rivers and lakes, into estuaries and the sea. Along these paths, many important processes take place. Some may send nutrients to the bed sediments or change their form so that they become more or less available for aquatic life, including algae, bacteria and zooplankton. The BIOPOLE project is designed to harness facilities and expertise across the NERC Centres and our partners to design a monitoring programme capable of capturing these changes in remote Arctic and Antarctic locations.
The BIOPOLE team have worked over the past few months to develop an approach to measure the sensitivity of major nutrient sources to climate change, in both Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems. They embarked on their maiden ‘land-cruise’ to Loch Etive, Scotland, where the Scottish weather put them to the test.
Preparing for the campaign. The campaign was designed to prepare the field and lab teams for deployment to our four polar research stations, later in the project. These stations are Ny-Ålesund and the Tana River, in the Arctic, and Rothera and King Edward Point, in Antarctica. The first job was to compile a list of determinants to be measured and to prepare field plans and analytical protocols, equipment and shipping logs. The team will ship most of the equipment they need from the UK to the polar research stations, and back again. So, it is important that we don’t forget anything, but also that we don’t end up with crates of equipment that the field team doesn’t need.
Day one of the Loch Etive field campaign saw discussions on logistics and practicalities of sample collection. The team had previously liaised with the NERC Polar Station Management Team at Ny-Ålesund (their first stop) to scope out the fieldwork. One central challenge is on reducing the volume of water and sediment collected from remote locations whilst maximising the data produced for the wider scientific community. There are, however, other reasons to consider reducing sample volumes that need to be carried across land. Where samples are to be collected on foot from rivers in the Arctic, we will be in polar bear country and will be equipped with firearms. [We have re-named the UKCEH RIB ‘The Sea Bear’ – Ursus maritimus].
Day 2 to 4. Three sub-teams deployed to collect samples from 21 stations around Loch Etive. These stations included major inflows, sampled by foot, and transects along a salinity gradient down the loch, sampled by RIB Sea Bear. This latter survey was interrupted as winds topped 40 MPH, making boat work unsafe. Before the winds picked up, we did manage to sample some of the upper loch, in the hour or two break in the sideways rain. This uncovered a stunning display of ephemeral streams in full flow, and indicated the short-lived nature of nutrient delivery under extreme climatic events – a problem to be covered in our sampling design. Day 4 saw a final outing for RIB Sea Bear on the loch survey. If we didn’t hit this window, the data set would be compromised. It was worth the wait. The team were treated to glorious autumnal weather, calm waters, sea otters, seals and, double rainbows, and, best of all, a full cool box of sample bottles.
Of course, science isn’t all polar bears, double rainbows, and ephemeral streams. The reality is often many hours in the lab. The lab sub-team were based at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), Oban. Samples were dropped off through the week by the field teams for processing. The lab team worked to create a protocol for preparing samples, filtering hundreds of litres of water, and labelling bottles and tubes. This has been captured in one of the finest spreadsheets ever created; to track sample collection, preparation and storage, through to shipping to analytical laboratories in the UK and internationally.
What information will we produce? Our samples will be shipped to various analytical laboratories to produce data on nutrient concentrations and tracers of nutrient sources so they can be tracked as they travel through the loch to the sea. Samples were collected for eDNA analysis, to capture snapshots of the biological communities across the loch. Field and laboratory experiments were trialled to assess interactions between nutrients and suspended sediments and algae, and the major processes acting to alter nutrient delivery from land to sea. In the end, we should know where the nutrients are coming from, how they are transformed as they travel through the loch, and how much of this makes it out to sea.
What happens next? The team is now working hard to review, refine and revise the protocols, based on experiences from Loch Etive and the data produced, in consultation with our project partners. When everyone is happy, we will publish the protocols on this website. They will form the basis of the land-based field campaigns at the Polar Stations, later in the project.
BIOPOLE recently held a meeting with a range of stakeholders (i.e., individuals or groups who may benefit from the outputs of BIOPOLE) to discuss potential collaborations that could extend the spatial and temporal coverage of BIOPOLE in the Southern Ocean beyond the Southwest Atlantic sector, providing mutually beneficial scientific outputs to all parties. These stakeholders included Antarctic researchers from a range of national research programmes (e.g., the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Germany, the Palmer Station Antarctica Long Term Ecological Research (Palmer Station Antarctica LTER), US, the Australian Antarctic Programme, Australia, the National Institute for Polar Research (NiPR), Japan, Instituto di Scienze Polari (ISP), Italy) and national and international initiatives (e.g., The Marine Observatory in the Ross Sea (MorSea), the Argo Network, the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey, and the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) programme) that carry out BIOPOLE-relevant research activities in the east Antarctic, the Ross, Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas, along the west Antarctic Peninsula, across the Scotia Sea, and into the Weddell Sea.
Participants shared current and future plans of these programmes and initiatives, together with their research foci and spatio-temporal scope. With these in mind, we discussed a range of possibilities to increase opportunities for biological, physical and biogeochemical data collection in areas of interest to BIOPOLE aligned with future national Antarctic programmes (e.g., sharing of free berths with BIOPOLE researchers and/or opportunities for stakeholders to collect samples from marine cruises/expeditions and underway technologies, and provide data from glider and mooring programmes and marine mammal tagging studies), technologies associated with international initiatives (e.g., MORSea, Argo, and SOCCOM, including Argo and BIO-Argo floats, gliders, and mooring platforms equipped with a range of sensors), and data from long-term monitoring programmes (e.g., from Palmer Station Antarctica LTER, US Antarctic Marine Living Resources (AMLR), the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), and monitoring programmes conducted by the Germans, Norwegians and Koreans) and data stored in open access portals (e.g., the Southern Ocean Observing System, SOOS). To maximise the use of data collected in the field, everyone agreed the need for standardised sampling protocols (as per the BIOPOLE cookbook) and trial samples to calibrate equipment (e.g., to replicate BIOPOLE activities already underway for the Arctic). Recognising the cost of Southern Ocean research, BIOPOLE also extended help to these stakeholders in addressing data and analysis gaps (e.g., in collecting and sharing samples and data, or providing BIOPOLE expertise) and linking to relevant international programmes and initiatives. Given the uncertainty of Antarctic fieldwork plans and ship logistics (of both current and new vessels) and our shared research interests, we all agreed on the value of collaborating and sharing opportunities for sampling and berths as they arise. This will ultimately provide mutual benefit to both BIOPOLE and the activities of our stakeholders. We would also like to hear from other national operators and programmes who are interested in working with BIOPOLE to achieve these objectives. Please contact biopole@bas.ac.uk
Underwater robots will help BIOPOLE scientists understand how changing river runoff and melting ice will impact nutrient cycling in the high latitudes and beyond. But these robots need to be tested before they are sent off into the wild…
Many of the essential nutrients that are needed by marine algae in the polar regions are supplied by freshwaters, including glacial melt, river waters, and melting permafrost. As part of BIOPOLE, we’re going to track where these freshwaters flow when they hit the ocean, and what happens to all the nutrients that they supply. One set of tools that we have available to us to track these waters is autonomous vehicles – marine robots full of sensors that can measure the temperature, saltiness, and other properties of the water at very high resolution in space and time, independently of a boat. Also, critically, these robots can reach places that boats can’t reach safely (or at all), such as near icebergs and glaciers, and work with a much lower carbon footprint.
The BAS Polar Oceans team have recently got new additions to their robotics fleet, including a new rechargeable Slocum G3 glider and mini autonomous vehicles called ecoSUBs. Before the new kit is deployed in the Arctic and Antarctic as part of BIOPOLE, everything needed to be tested – somewhere a lot closer to home!
The first week involved a lot of work in the Scottish Marine Robotics Facility getting everything ready in the laboratory. The glider and ecoSUBs first need to be tested for buoyancy, so that they float in the water under the right conditions. This is done by adding or taking away weights within the frame of the vehicles, and then testing them in a large tank of seawater. Then the communications need to be tested, to make sure that the robots are receiving and transmitting data via satellite to and from the team’s computers and servers in Cambridge.
In the second week, it was time to let the robots out into the wild (and the early October driving rain). Thanks to friends in SAMS, the team were able to take the glider out into a nearby sea loch, deep enough to test deploying the vehicle and to run a “mission”, and into a shallower bay to test an ecoSUB. Except for a few little adjustments to make (as is always the case for a ‘dress rehearsal’) the robots worked well – and, most importantly, all were recovered at the end!
Next step: it’s back to the lab for the glider and ecoSUB for more tweaking and then, eventually, out into the Arctic and Antarctic in 2023-2024.
