Arctic GIS Workshop Poster Abstract

22-24 January 2001
Bell Harbor International Conference Center
Seattle, Washington

Application of Geographical Information System (GIS) Techniques to Assessing Benthic Biological Change in the Bering Sea

Jackie L. Clement, Lee W. Cooper, and Jackie M. Grebmeier
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996

The northern Bering and Chukchi continental shelves support the highest macroinvertebrate biomass of any Arctic or sub-Arctic. These sediment-based biological communities support high populations of higher apex predators, including walrus, bearded seal, gray whale, and diving sea ducks that forage on the sea floor at different times of the year. Because the Bering and Chukchi shelves are some of the largest continental shelves in the world, the sedimentation of organic materials from the water column that support the benthos is a key variable to understanding ecosystem structure and function. Recent concern about changes in the Bering Sea system and its overall biological productivity have encouraged the compilation of current and past data on benthic species composition, biomass, and other oceanographic data sets. Much of these data were collected on a geographical basis, including biomass, community structure, water column chemistry, chlorophyll distributions, and biogeochemical tracer distributions. In our initial work, we have been using desktop GIS software (ArcView) to evaluate the importance of seasonal versus interannual variability in physical, chemical, and biological processes that might influence underlying benthic communities. We anticipate expanding this effort by employing ArcInfo to overlay multiple data sets and illuminate biological changes that may not be as apparent without a multi-dimensional, analytical approach.