Northern Seas Programme (NSP)

Marine environmental change in Northern Seas: natural and anthropogenic influences

This five-year NERC-funded Core Strategic Research Programme ran from 2001-2007.

To address the programme aim required closely linked studies of changing species diversity, ecosystem function, biogeochemical impacts and physical disturbance, in order to more clearly define ecosystem resilience and sustainability.

The Northern Seas Programme has advanced our understanding of how marine systems respond to environmental and anthropogenic change. SAMS conducted studies from the Irish and northern North Seas, across the north east Atlantic and up to the marginal Arctic pack ice zone. This deliberate geographic designation concentrated our intellectual and practical resources on a marine environment under increasing pressure from natural (climate) and human (exploitation, pollution) impacts. Whilst relevant for at least the next decade, the initial work plan focused on deliverables to be achieved within five years.

Testing hypotheses under this aim, thereby developing and informing appropriate models, will be of critical importance to Scottish, northern  European and Scandinavian seas struggling to balance sustainability with increasing exploitation in the face of potentially rapid climatic change and human impact. Northern coastal seas are likely to face considerable changes in land drainage if projected warming of northern latitudes occurs. The ecosystem response to the effects of increased nutrients and dissolved organic inputs, coupled with greater turbidity from soil erosion, cannot be predicted with any certainty in this region at present. The relatively well-known coastal fjords and offshore environments to the west of Scotland exhibit many of the anthropogenic impacts common to the wider north eastern Atlantic. Study of Scottish fjords and the adjacent continental margin, extended along a latitudinal and climatic gradient, builds on the achievements of SAMS over the past thirty years. The integrated ecosystem approach adopted by this Programme makes a unique contribution to the UK strategy for marine science.

The Northern Seas Programme (NSP) was designed around three themes, and each theme comprised a series of questions or tasks:

Understanding fjordic systems: insights for coastal and oceanic processes

• Where and how is energy dissipated in fjords? (PI Mark Inall)
• How will pelagic microbial communities in northern coastal seas respond to changes in the quality and quantity of nutrient inputs? (PI Ray Leakey)
• What are the important behavioural and physiological components of top-down control on sea loch ecosystems? (PI Mike Burrows)

• How does bioturbation vary in response to environmental forcing and what are the consequences for redistribution of anthropogenic contaminants? (PI Kenny Black)
  
• Are deep-sea proxy-indicators of environmental and climatic change applicable to high-resolution sedimentary records in fjordic environments? (PI Tracy Shimmield)
  

Ocean margins; the interface between the coastal zone and oceanic realm

• Carbon dynamics at the ocean margins (PIs Tracy Shimmield and David Hughes)
  
• The Ellett Line long time series
  
• The ecology of deep-water fisheries of the Northern Rockall Trough (PI John Gordon) 

Measuring and modelling change: sea sensors and bioinformatics (PI David Meldrum) 

For information about the research done in these areas, please consult our annual reports of this time or contact the PIs who led the work.