Modelling the spatial shifts of functional groups in the Barents Sea using a climate-driven spatial food web model
Permanent link
https://hdl.handle.net/10037/28871Date
2023-03-28Type
Journal articleTidsskriftartikkel
Peer reviewed
Abstract
We built a dynamic, spatial food web model for the Barents Sea, developed with Ecospace by including species’
habitat requirements and ecological interactions. The model was used to test the spatial shifts of different
functional groups due to warming. We compared model-predicted and field-surveyed biomass of functional
groups (FGs) spatial distributions in relatively cold and warm years. The Ecospace model included habitat
foraging capacities for environmental parameters such as water temperature and bottom depth for 74 FGs out of
a total of 108 FGs. We created two plausible scenarios, one representing a relatively cold year (2004) and another
representing a warm year (2013) with differences of ca. 0.3 ◦C in bottom temperature, 0.6 ◦C in surface temperature, and 7% less ice coverage between them. Comparison of centre of gravity, inertia, and spatial overlap of
the modelled and surveyed spatial distributions in warm and cold years showed that the model represented the
past distributions of the functional groups satisfactorily. We observed poleward shifts of 41 and 68 km for the
modelled and observed distributions, respectively, in the average centre of gravity position for the 35 FGs with
lowest sampling uncertainty. The model predicted that the whole community had shifted distribution towards
the northeast at an average rate of 4.4 km year−1 and 67 km ◦C-1 between 2004 and 2013. We conclude that our
Ecospace model represents past observed species distributions in the Barents Sea satisfactorily, and may predict
the direction and magnitude of temperature-driven changes in spatial distributions. This ability may be useful for
predicting the impact of climate changes on species and FG distributions in future scenarios.
Publisher
ElsevierCitation
Nascimento MC, Husson B, Guillet L, Pedersen TP. Modelling the spatial shifts of functional groups in the Barents Sea using a climate-driven spatial food web model. Ecological Modelling. 2023;481Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
Copyright 2023 The Author(s)