Impacts of deglaciation on benthic marine ecosystems in Antarctica (ICEBERGS) is one of three NERC-CONICYT joint funded projects running from 2017 to 2021. The aim of the programme is to investigate the impacts of physical disturbance arising from climate-warming induced deglaciation on benthic communities around the West Antarctic Peninsula.
In order to meet the aim of the project, the ICEBERGS consortium produced six objectives:
- Monitoring glacier retreat over time and scour intensity on the adjacent seabed.
- Determine the benthic assemblage structure from localities with different perturbation levels.
- Evaluate nutritional and reproductive conditions of adults.
- Analyse growth rates from bivalve/gastropod shells and bryozoan populations with different perturbation levels.
- Develop reconstructions of physical disturbance due to iceberg discharge from growth patterns present in the carbonate structure of the shells of marine molluscs.
- Estimate the effect of marine glacier discharge and iceberg scouring on the genetic diversity and connectivity of marine invertebrate populations and the role of dispersal potential.
The fieldwork for the project consists of research cruises along the west Antarctic Peninsula across three field seasons on board the RRS James Clark Ross. Three sites (Marine Cove, William Glacier and Sheldon Glacier) were selected for the fieldwork using available bathymetry and glacier retreat data. The fieldwork covers physical oceanography, marine geology, habitat mapping, community structure and seabed sediments and consists of CTD deployments, multi-beam swath bathymetry surveys, TOPAS sub-bottom profiling, shallow underwater camera system deployments, plankton net deployments, Agassiz trawls, Hamon grabs and multi-corer deployments.
There are four research institutions involved in the project:
Bangor University
University of Exeter
Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
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