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Potential impact of climate change on ecosystems of the Barents Sea Region

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Abstract

The EU project BALANCE (Global Change Vulnerabilities in the Barents region: Linking Arctic Natural Resources, Climate Change and Economies) aims to assess vulnerability to climate change in the Barents Sea Region. As a prerequisite the potential impact of climate change on selected ecosystems of the study area has to be quantified, which is the subject of the present paper. A set of ecosystem models was run to generate baseline and future scenarios for 1990, 2020, 2050 and 2080. The models are based on data from the Regional Climate Model (REMO), driven by a GCM which in turn is forced by the IPCC-B2 scenario. The climate change is documented by means of the Köppen climate classification. Since the multitude of models requires the effect of climate change on individual terrestrial and marine systems to be integrated, the paper concentrates on a standardised visualisation of potential impacts by use of a Geographical Information System for the timeslices 2050 and 2080. The resulting maps show that both terrestrial and marine ecosystems of the Barents region will undergo significant changes until both 2050 and 2080.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Geophysics, University of Münster, Corrensstrasse 24, 48149, Munster, Germany

    Hedwig Roderfeld & Manfred A. Lange

  2. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, OX10 8BB, UK

    Eleanor Blyth

  3. Institute for Environment and Sustainability, JRC European Commission, 21020, Ispra, (VA), Italy

    Rutger Dankers

  4. Institute of Marine Research, P.O. Box 1870, Nordnes, 5817, Bergen, Norway

    Geir Huse

  5. SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture, 465, Trondheim, Norway

    Dag Slagstad & Ingrid Ellingsen

  6. Forest Ecology, Universitätstrasse 16, ETH-Zentrum, CHN, G 77, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Annett Wolf

Authors
  1. Hedwig Roderfeld
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  2. Eleanor Blyth
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  3. Rutger Dankers
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  4. Geir Huse
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  5. Dag Slagstad
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  6. Ingrid Ellingsen
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  7. Annett Wolf
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  8. Manfred A. Lange
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Correspondence to Hedwig Roderfeld.

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Roderfeld, H., Blyth, E., Dankers, R. et al. Potential impact of climate change on ecosystems of the Barents Sea Region. Climatic Change 87, 283–303 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-007-9350-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-007-9350-4

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