Prof. Dr. Anja Engel
Speaker Topic 6
aengel(at)geomar.de
Dr. Beate Slaby
Coordinator Topic 6
bslaby(at)geomar.de
Topic 6: Marine and polar Life
The planet's largest habitat - How can we explore, protect and sustainably use oceans and polar regions? Warming, acidification, oxygen depletion and pollution: all these processes are changing the oceans, the largest habitat on our planet. This is compounded by over-exploitation by fisheries and plans to exploit resources from the seafloor down to the deep sea in the future. These changes affect marine life: organisms migrate to new habitats, some adapt, others are displaced, and biodiversity decreases, with as yet largely unexplored consequences for the complex marine ecosystem.
The Indonesian Komodo National Park still hosts marine communities of high diversity. Photo: Anna Roik / GEOMAR
Intensive fishing affects species composition in the ocean. Photo: Maike Nicolai/GEOMAR
Plastic waste is dangerous for some species in the ocean. However, the effects on the overall ocean system have hardly been researched yet. Photo: Mark Lenz/GEOMAR
Global change and other human impacts are putting pressure on ocean biodiversity, which is trying to adapt to changing environmental conditions in response. How will the increased uptake of carbon dioxide affect marine ecosystems? Topic 6, with its four subtopics, addresses these issues and their interactions. Graphic: Christoph Kersten/GEOMAR
Many interactions and processes in the complex ecosystem under water or under sea ice are still not understood. Many regions are still completely unexplored. In addition, organisms have to adapt to changing environmental conditions through evolution or open up new habitats through migration. There are winners and losers here - and the changes are also taking place very rapidly compared with other episodes in the (climate) history of our planet.
Within the framework of the programme "Changing Earth - Sustaining our Future" in the fourth phase of the Helmholtz Association's (PoF) project-oriented funding programme, the GEOMAR-led Topic 6 "Marine and Polar Life: Sustaining Biodiversity, Biotic Interactions and Biogeochemical Functions", these complex interactions in the marine ecosystem are being studied in detail. Main partner in Topic 6 is the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). While the AWI concentrates on the polar regions and issues in the North Sea environment, GEOMAR focuses more on areas in mid and low latitudes and the deep sea. GEOMAR's Research Division 2 Marine Biogeochemistry and Research Division 3 Marine Ecology work in this Topic.
Topic 6 provides the scientific foundation for a sustainable management of the ocean by determining the functions and dynamics of marine ecosystems and assessing options to remedy and mitigate human impacts. Topic 6 studies the diversity, structure and functioning of the marine biosphere, investigates how marine organisms and ecosystems will adapt and respond to human impacts and assesses to what extent the uptake of CO2 by the marine biosphere and the biogeochemical cycles in the ocean are affected by climate change.
The Topic is divided into four Subtopics: "Future ecosystem functionality", "Adaptation of marine life: from genes to ecosystems", the "Future biological carbon pump" and "Use and misuse of theocean: Consequences for marine ecosystems’".
More about Topic 6 on the webpages of the Helmholtz Research Field Earth and Environment
