Title: Macrobenthic fauna on the West Coast of Greenland
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Principal Investigator Mikael Sejr, National Environmental Research Institute, Aarhus University, Demark |
Project goals
(1) To publish a macrobenthic dataset from SW Greenland fjord, (2) to identify fauna from additional samples collected in NW Greenland, (3) to submit the entire data set from NW Greenland (approximately 150 samples) to the ArcOD database.
Results
ArcOD support contributed to a paper published in Polar Biology that includes core results from nine stations along a transect from the inner Godthaabsfjord across a shallow bank and out to the continental slope (~ 1,000 m depth). Those locations differed greatly with regards to their environmental characteristics. Resulting differences in species composition were primarily related to depth, silt–clay fractions and chl a content of the sediment. Species turnover was consequently high and was correlated to differences in depth, silt–clay fraction and median sediment grain size. Species richness and diversity were lowest near the glaciers in the inner fjord where high physical disturbance by mineral sedimentation occurs, and at selected stations on the shelf where bioturbation was high. The generated data sets were submitted to the ArcOD / OBIS database.
