Because marine mammals are large, homeothermic animals, they can cope with significant ranges of water and air temperatures. So, marine mammals residing in, and those that currently migrate seasonally into, the Barents Region are not likely to be directly physiologically challenged by the predicted increases in air and water temperatures. Physical changes in the marine environment are likely to have impacts first and foremost on the animals that depend on sea-ice (e.g. Kovacs and Lydersen, 2008; Kovacs et al., 2009).
Physical variation in the Barents Sea is likely to affect seabirds both directly and indirectly. Direct influence works primarily through the effects of temperature, wind and precipitation during the breeding season, and through extreme weather outside the breeding season. Temperature and wind affect the birds’ energy budget, and changes in these factors can impose great energy costs on the birds....
The organisms in the ecosystem are linked through ecological interactions to form a food web, which has several trophic levels: producers (plants) at the lowest trophic level, primary consumers feeding on the producers, secondary producers feeding on the primary consumers and so on up to the apex predators that do not have any predators feeding on them, except for young stages in some species and ...
In the Barents Sea, phytoplankton is the main primary producer sustaining the rest of the food web. Within the phytoplankton community there is a competition for light and dissolved nutrients. The phytoplankton species in the Barents Sea are either pelagic, or linked to the ice edge in a way similar to the ice algae. Phytoplankton blooms in spring and summer and attracts concentrations of intensiv...
