Sampling high Arctic sea-ice ecosystems

Climate change is causing the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice and an area along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada and the northwestern coast of Greenland is projected to be the last Arctic region to contain sea ice in the summer by 2050. The Multidisciplinary Arctic Program - Last Ice project set out to sample the biological, physical, and chemical properties of the sea ice, water, and all levels of the food web from algae, to fish and marine mammals in this region. The goal is to characterize this unique sea-ice ecosystem and assess it’s suitability as a refuge for ice dependent Arctic species while the Government of Canada established the Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area.

Collection of under-ice light measurements during the 2018 sea-ice sampling field season in Alert, NU.

Read the coverage of this project by CBC

Read more on sampling sea-ice ecosystems:

Lange, B. A., Haas, C., Charette, J., Katlein, C., Campbell, K., Duerksen, S., Coupel, P., Anhaus, P., Jutila, A., Tremblay, P. O. G., Carlyle, C. G. and Michel, C. (2019). Contrasting ice algae and snow-dependent irradiance relationships between first-year and multiyear sea ice. Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 10834– 10843. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082873