The White House’s press release about President Obama’s recent announcement regarding new investments aimed at enhancing safety and security in the changing Arctic notes that “Climate change is reshaping the Arctic in profound ways. The global Arctic has warmed approximately twice as fast as the rest of the world, resulting in significant impacts on land and sea.”
As a part of the Arctic initiatives detailed in this fact sheet, released during President Obama’s visit to Alaska and the Arctic in early September, the White House highlighted the launching of the Arctic Marine Biodiversity Network (AMBON), a five-year demonstration project assessing Arctic marine-biodiversity.
During three sampling cruises supported by this project, scientists will gather a broad range of Arctic marine-biodiversity data, including bird and mammal observations, water-column analysis (temperature, salinity, chlorophyll-a extraction, isotopic tracers of melted sea ice, and nutrients, etc.), and gather information on the sea-floor communities, microbes, and small eukaryotic plankton, zooplankton, sediment cores, and fishes. The goal of the Network is to demonstrate and build an operational biodiversity observation network from microbes to high trophic levels in the context of climate change and human influences.
AMBON, a project being led by Dr. Katrin Iken of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will benefit from the contributions of local scientists Dr. Lee Cooper and Dr. Jacqueline Grebmeier, both of whom are Research Professors at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory on Solomons Island.
Drs. Cooper and Grebmeier, working shipboard with their student Christina Goethel, and laboratory staff in Solomons island, will contribute their expertise in benthic ecology and biogeochemical drivers of biodiversity to the project.
All three have spent the past month onboard the Norseman II in the Chukchi Sea as a part of the science team carrying out the first AMBON cruise.
Dr. Cooper reacted to the release of the fact sheet by the White House: “Well, we have been watching the President's visit to Alaska vicariously over the internet—I have been to the Exit Glacier, Resurrection Bay, and the Snow City Cafe in Anchorage and to Kotzebue, for example. We've been most of the places he visited this week, although I think he got around easier than us on Air Force One and the helicopter trip to Seward. It is still a bit of a thrill to have the project we are working on now at sea mentioned in a White House press release after a long month at sea on a relatively small boat. To have had the chance to have a graduate student join us, with the evidence that maybe in the end, we do make a little difference in our work in improving understanding of the Arctic and its response to environmental change, is another plus.”
Student Highlight: Christina Goethel
Christina Goethel, a graduate student studying for a Master’s degree in Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences program at UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL), isn’t just accompanying her advisors, Drs. Jacqueline Grebmeier and Lee Cooper, on this Arctic expedition; she is gathering samples for her thesis research.
This summer, Christina has spent about six weeks on two separate arctic cruises. In addition to helping her advisors conduct shipboard research on these trips, Christina has been collecting clams from the bottom of the Chukchi Sea and transporting them to CBL, where she will conduct laboratory experiments.
“The goal of my project is to examine the effects of the steadily rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and resulting ocean acidification on shell hardness, 
shell thickness, and metabolic rate of four species of Arctic clams: Macoma calcarea, Macoma moesta, Astarte borealis, and Astarte montagui,” said Christina.
“The Arctic region as a whole is very sensitive to climate change, and acts as a moderator of climate for the rest of the globe. Bivalves, like Macoma calcarea, are an important component of the Pacific Arctic marine ecosystem and prey base for the benthic-feeding marine mammals, such as walrus and bearded seals, and diving seabirds,” she explained.
“Understanding how climate change will affect the Arctic, both physically and biologically, will allow us to better understand effects seen in other parts of the globe.”
To learn more about the AMBON project, as well as other Arctic research efforts being pioneered by Drs. Cooper and Grebmeier, please visit their website: Arctic Scientific Research at UMCES CBL
Related News: Dr. Jacqueline Grebmeier awarded 2015 International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) Medal
Read the full White House press release: FACT SHEET: President Obama Announces New Investments to Enhance Safety and Security in the Changing Arctic
