A special session on Experimental Approaches to Assess Climate Change Impacts on Marine Phytoplankton is being convened at the 2009 ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting, in Nice, France, Jan 25-30. If you have questions, please contact the session organizers.
Abstract: Experimental Approaches to Assess Climate Change Impacts on Marine Phytoplankton.
The predicted effects of climate change on the open ocean point to concurrent alteration of many factors that determine algal community structure, set rates of primary production, and control carbon and nutrient cycling. In turn, these shifts in phytoplankton assemblages could drive a number of positive and negative feedbacks to global climate. Changing light climate, temperature, macronutrient and trace metal inventories, pCO2 and ocean acidification, and biological competition and trophic interactions will potentially alter both ecosystem structure and ocean biogeochemistry, yet are challenging to include within the design of traditional perturbation experiments. In this session we encourage presentations that represent and encompass the wide variety of approaches – from modelling experiments, mesocosms, and in situ observations to physiological and genetic investigations of lab cultures – that are needed to tackle this most pressing of issues.
Philip Boyd,
David Hutchins,
