• Develop a common set of benthic indicator species and reference levels for contaminant levels and biomarker effects of Barents Sea benthic organisms.
• Recommend indicators, and identify their strengths and limitations for application to benthic monitoring in the Barents Sea.
• Evaluate traditional and novel biodiversity indicators for application in the Barents Sea based on existing and new data sets on environmental and faunal characteristics.
• Assess the applicability of the chosen indicators today and in the future based on climate change and economic (including petroleum) development scenarios for the Barents Sea during the next 30 years.

The project synthesizes and integrates research data produced in recent years as a basis for the selection and further development of benthic indicator organisms for the monitoring of contaminants and biodiversity in the Barents Sea. These will be complimented by research on baseline variations in the levels of biologically relevant endpoints (biomarkers) and contaminants in selected indicator organisms.

A secondary objective will be to examine linkages between environmental exposure and effects for PAHs in selected indicators. Biodiversity indicators will be developed by applying a number of classical interpretation methods to examine recent trends in newly acquired benthic biodiversity data sets of the Barents Sea. The results provide the best available scientific basis for proposing appropriate indicators and to establish a baseline that is unrelated to petroleum industry activities. These results will serve as a knowledge basis for evaluating how ecological differences between the Barents and North/Norwegian Seas are relevant for adapting on-going monitoring programs to the Barents Sea. These findings will then be assessed within the context of a changing Barents Sea, examining climate-related ecosystem changes and petroleum industry activities in the region for the coming decades. We will use this information to evaluate how future changes may affect the validity of indicators developed for the present day Barents Sea. In this way, ECOBAR will achieve a set of benthic indicators with maximum flexibility and validity for assessing the present day and future health status of a changing Barents Sea.

Three main work packages:
WP1:Individual-based indicators for the Barents Sea
WP2: Community-based benthic indicators for the Barents Sea
WP3: Applying proposed indicators to a changing Barents Sea

For more information contact: Dr. JoLynn Caroll, Akvaplan-NIVA (jolynn@akvaplan.niva.no)

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