How Does Environmental Variance Affect Climate Change?
I. INTRODUCTION
The composition, stability, and structure of ecologic assemblages is increasingly forced by environmental variance. Moreover, studies have shown that it is no longer possible to ignore the effects of variation from biologic models examining the effects of climate change (Lawson et al. 2015; Walther et al. 2015). The role of environmental variance is challenging traditional theoretical approaches supplanting the notion of absolute climate changes. In a world with fluctuating climates, two main questions have emerged with urgency: first, how do ecologic assemblages respond to changes in environmental variance; and second, how does environmental variance affect ecologic assemblages’ responses to changes in a mean condition (Lawson et al. 2015)?
Answering these questions is only possible in study areas with long time series of observations to highlight how communities respond to changes in mean climate conditions (e.g., Hunt et al. 2002; Walther et al. 2002; Doney et al. 2011). For example, a 30-year data set, created by the Arctic Research Group (ARG) has revealed that …show more content…
High Latitude Death Assemblages as Archives of Ecologic Data:
1.1. What proportion of the total living macrobenthic community is preserved in the death assemblage under Arctic and Subarctic conditions;
1.2. How faithful is the composition, stability, and structure of dead-shell assemblage to the living molluscan communities pristine Subarctic and Arctic conditions, DBO1 and DBO4 respectively;
1.3. Does the dead-shell assemblage capture the shifting Subarctic-Arctic boundary in the transition area, DBO 2 and 3; and,
1.4. What is the temporal resolution of these dead assemblages, established using maximum and median shell ages?
2. Creating a Record of Benthic Climate Variability Before and During Instrumentation:
2.1. What is the Arctic and Subarctic history of variable water mass boundaries, carbon inputs and bottom water circulation, using sclerochronology of aragonite δ18O, and
The composition, stability, and structure of ecologic assemblages is increasingly forced by environmental variance. Moreover, studies have shown that it is no longer possible to ignore the effects of variation from biologic models examining the effects of climate change (Lawson et al. 2015; Walther et al. 2015). The role of environmental variance is challenging traditional theoretical approaches supplanting the notion of absolute climate changes. In a world with fluctuating climates, two main questions have emerged with urgency: first, how do ecologic assemblages respond to changes in environmental variance; and second, how does environmental variance affect ecologic assemblages’ responses to changes in a mean condition (Lawson et al. 2015)?
Answering these questions is only possible in study areas with long time series of observations to highlight how communities respond to changes in mean climate conditions (e.g., Hunt et al. 2002; Walther et al. 2002; Doney et al. 2011). For example, a 30-year data set, created by the Arctic Research Group (ARG) has revealed that …show more content…
High Latitude Death Assemblages as Archives of Ecologic Data:
1.1. What proportion of the total living macrobenthic community is preserved in the death assemblage under Arctic and Subarctic conditions;
1.2. How faithful is the composition, stability, and structure of dead-shell assemblage to the living molluscan communities pristine Subarctic and Arctic conditions, DBO1 and DBO4 respectively;
1.3. Does the dead-shell assemblage capture the shifting Subarctic-Arctic boundary in the transition area, DBO 2 and 3; and,
1.4. What is the temporal resolution of these dead assemblages, established using maximum and median shell ages?
2. Creating a Record of Benthic Climate Variability Before and During Instrumentation:
2.1. What is the Arctic and Subarctic history of variable water mass boundaries, carbon inputs and bottom water circulation, using sclerochronology of aragonite δ18O, and