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Polar communities are expected to experience the impacts of ocean acidification sooner and more heavily than other regions, and serve as indicators of the consequences we can expect from increasing ocean CO2 concentrations. Few studies to date have focused on impacts of acidification on in situ benthic communities, and none on in situ polar benthic communities. The development of Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment (FOCE) technology makes possible antFOCE: a replicated 4 month low pH (0.4 below ambient) experiment on the Antarctic sea floor near Casey Station (66°S, 110°E) to quantify responses in microbial, macrofauna and meiofauna community composition (e.g. crustacea, molluscs, annelids, diatoms, protists, bacteria), recruitment processes (via settlement tiles), bioturbation (via luminophores) and biogeochemical cycling processes (via flux measurements) and the vulnerability of key species (e.g. calcifiers) under high ocean CO2 conditions. This polar application of FOCE will contribute to the growing worldwide network of in situ tropical (cpFOCE) and temperate (dpFOCE, eFOCE, swFOCE) community-scale experiments to better understand likely marine ecosystem change from the tropics to the poles as a result of ocean acidification.

Item Type:	Conference Extract
Keywords:	Antarctic Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment Experiment
Research Division:	Environmental Sciences
Research Group:	Ecological Applications
Research Field:	Ecological Impacts of Climate Change
Objective Division:	Environment
Objective Group:	Climate and Climate Change
Objective Field:	Effects of Climate Change and Variability on Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic Environments (excl. Social Impacts)
UTAS Author:	Roberts, D (Dr Donna Roberts)
UTAS Author:	McMinn, A (Professor Andrew McMinn)
ID Code:	89524
Year Published:	2014
Funding Support:	Australian Research Council (LE130100220)
Deposited By:	CRC-Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems
Deposited On:	2014-03-06
Last Modified:	2014-04-29
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