<p>Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is recognised as one of the greatest public health concerns of our time. The development of AMR occurs in nature as a defence by microbes against naturally occurring antimicrobials. However, the selective pressure, generated by the use of antimicrobial agents in human and veterinary medicine, livestock and plant production as well as aquaculture practices, is the ...

Recreational trails are a vital element of protected natural areas (PNAs) infrastructure, which enables visitors to travel through and engage in various activities such as hiking, biking, horse riding. Degradation of trails adversely affects the natural environment as well as the safety and comfort of visitors. As the role of many PNAs is to protect the natural environment and to provide recreational ...

Diatoms tend to dominate the Arctic spring phytoplankton bloom, a key event in the ecosystem including a rapid decline in surface-water <i>p</i>CO₂. While a mass sedimentation event of diatoms at the bloom terminus is commonly observed, there are few reports on the status of diatoms' health during Arctic blooms and its possible role on sedimentary fluxes. Thus, we examine the idea that ...

<p>Climate warming influences structure and function of Arctic benthic ecosystems. Assessing the response of these systems to perturbations requires long-term studies addressing key ecological processes related to recolonization and succession of species. Based on unique time-series (1980–2017), this study addresses successional patterns of hard-bottom benthos in two fjords in NW Svalbard after a ...

Continental slopes – steep regions between the shelf break and abyssal ocean – play key roles in the climatology and ecology of the Arctic Ocean. Here, through review and synthesis, we find that the narrow slope regions contribute to ecosystem functioning disproportionately to the size of the habitat area (∼6% of total Arctic Ocean area). Driven by inflows of sub-Arctic waters and steered by topography, ...

The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus L.) population on the Kola Peninsula occupies an intermediate, and potentially connecting, position between foxes living on the Scandinavian Peninsula and populations further east in Russia, but very little is known about the status of this population. Here we summarize data from the literature, forgotten archival sources about research in the first half of the twentieth ...

The migratory tundra caribou herds in North America follow decadal population cycles, and browsing from abundant caribou could be expected to counteract the current climate-driven expansion of shrubs in the circumpolar tundra biome. We demonstrate that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has provided a strong signal for climate-induced changes on the adjacent caribou summer ranges, outperforming ...

Recent molecular evidence suggests a global distribution of marine fungi; however, the ecological relevance and corresponding biological contributions of fungi to marine ecosystems remains largely unknown. We assessed fungal biomass from the open Arctic Ocean by applying novel biomass conversion factors from cultured isolates to environmental sterol and CARD-FISH data. <br>We found an average of ...

The attenuation coefficient <i>b</i> is one of the most common ways to describe how strong the carbon flux is attenuated throughout the water column. Therefore, <i>b</i> is an essential input variable in many carbon flux and climate models. Marsay et al. (2015, <a href=https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1415311112>https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1415311112</a>) proposed that the median surface water temperature ...

<p>1. Climate change is impacting different species at different rates, leading to alterations in biological interactions with ramifications for wider ecosystem functioning. Understanding these alterations can help improve predictive capacity and inform management efforts designed to mitigate against negative impacts.</p> <p>2. We investigated how the movement and space use patterns of polar bears ...