Abstract1. The natural environment of the Arctic is changing rapidly owing to climate change. At the same time in many countries including Russia the region is attracting growing attention of decisionmakers and business communities. In light of the above it is necessary to protect the biodiversity of the regional marine ecosystems in the most effective way possible, namely by establishing a network of marine protected areas.2. Identifying conservation priority areas is a key step towards this goal. To achieve it, a study based on a systematic conservation planning approach was conducted. An expanded group of experts used the MARXAN algorithm to produce initial results, then discussed and refined them to select 47 conservation priority areas in the Russian Arctic seas.3. The resulting network covers nearly 25% of the Russian Arctic seas, which guarantees proportional representation of their biodiversity as well as achieving connectivity, sustainability and naturalness. This was largely made possible by the selected methodology, based on the MARXAN decision support tool supplemented by extensive post-analysis that helped fill any gaps inevitable in the formal approach.4. Although available data were sparse, and of varying quality and a single regionalization scheme could not be used (as is often the case for such areas), the selected approach has proven successful for such a large area that covers both the coastal zone and parts of the High Seas. Such an approach could be used further to identify marine protected areas throughout the Arctic Ocean. Kudersky, 2004;Pavlov & Sundet, 2011;Spiridonov & Zalota, 2017) and sea ice habitat loss (Amstrup, Marcot, & Douglas, 2008;Moore & Huntington, 2008). Perhaps equally important, these changes lead to greater human presence in the region (Huettmann, 2012;Jørgensen et al., 2016;Wenzel et al., 2016). This could take many forms from increased oil and gas exploration and production, intensified shipping, fishing, aquaculture and tourism as well as greater military presence.In recent years serious efforts to protect marine biodiversity have been undertaken worldwide and the Russian Arctic seas are no exception. The Arctic is receiving growing attention in Russia as politicians, investors, media and the general public are pushing for a comeback after the country's withdrawal from the region in the 1990s. There are two approaches to conservation that prevail in the world today. One is based on industries regulations that are introduced alongside measures to protect or manage particular species or stocks (Roff & Zacharias, 2011). The other centres on areabased conservation measures and is widely regarded as effective (Roff & Zacharias, 2011;Spiridonov et al., 2012). In the Russian Arctic the latter remains less common. The region has seven Strictly Protected Natural Reserves, or zapovedniks (IUCN Ia), three National Parks (IUCN II), four Preserves (IUCN IV/VI), one Natural Monument (IUCN III) and 41 Regional Protected Areas (IUCN Ib), but their primary purpose is to protect terr...
Although Arctic communities are very sensitive to global warming, direct evidence of the effects of high temperature on bottom communities is quite rare. A mass mortality event (MME) of sponges we observed by SCUBA diving in July and August 2018 along the coasts of Kandalaksha Bay, White Sea, sub-Arctic. This event severely affected sponges from hardsubstratum communities in particular, the demosponges Isodyctia palmata and Halichondria sitiens. Constant and exceptionally high temperatures throughout the water column (average temperature differences of 6.5° C in July and 5.6° C in August 2018, relative to the average temperatures in previous years at a depth of 20 m) may have led to an environmental context favorable to the MME. As was observed for the thermal anomaly, mortality was limited at the depth below a thermocline. However, it is not possible to ascertain whether temperature had a direct effect on organisms or whether it acted in synergy with a latent and/or waterborne agent. However, viewed in the context of global warming, there is an urgent need to rapidly set up monitoring programs of physical-chemical parameters and vulnerable populations in benthic communities through the Arctic Basin.
The coastal water bodies that separate from White Sea water area due to Kandalaksha coast rise are examined. The hydrological and hydrochemical characteristics of these water bodies are found to notably differ from these in the bays and straits connected with them. Extreme values of water temperature and salinity were recorded. High concentrations of oxygen (>20 mg/l) were recorded in the near-surface water layers and high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide (>90 mg/l) in bottom waters. The species composition of phyto-and zooplankton was found to be poor. The characteristics of enzymatic destruction in subsurface waters of lakes are an order of magnitude greater than those in White Sea open areas.
Abstract1. The aim of the present study is to assess a conservation priority area (CPA) network proposed for the Russian Arctic seas (47 areas) with regard to underlying oceanographical features and to discuss further development of marine conservation planning.2. The oceanographical features included in the analysis were obtained from the literature or inferred from schemes of climatic oceanography.3. The most frequent oceanographic feature associated with a particular CPA is constant advection of a particular water mass, followed by local water mass transformation, seasonal ice zones, flaw polynyas, and external sources of nutrients. Particularly important are major frontal zones, and coastal phenomena such as coastal/offshore waters transition zones, massifs of fast ice and specific regimes of semi-isolated fjords and bays.4. Each Arctic sea in the study area or its large part (in the Barents Sea) is characterized by a distinct combination of oceanographical features associated with the respective CPAs.5. Although most oceanographical features were not involved in the process of developing the CPA network directly, the resulting CPAs are shown to have a solid oceanographical background.
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