Wolf E. Arntz Livres

Ten years after the publication of Weddell Sea Ecology, this collection of papers serves as a follow-up, featuring research from three Polarstern expeditions to the Weddell Sea and surrounding areas. It includes both land-based and shipborne studies, focusing primarily on the Atlantic sector and the Antarctic Peninsula. The SCAR programme, Ecology of the Antarctic Sea Ice Zone (EASIZ), facilitated international collaboration, with 40% of the scientists aboard Polarstern being from various countries. Notably, 14 out of the 35 papers in this volume have multinational authorship. EASIZ's scope extends beyond the Southern Ocean Studies in JGOFS and GLOBEC, emphasizing benthos research that has previously been overlooked in understanding the evolution and zoogeography of Southern Hemisphere fauna. The findings have significantly enhanced our understanding of the high biodiversity of the Antarctic shelf benthos. To further these studies into deeper continental slopes and the deep sea, Polarstern is currently conducting the first international survey of deep-sea benthos in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean.

En estos días -nos dicen los autores-, todo el mundo habla del efecto invernadero y de los peligros de los agujeros de la capa de ozono, y se especula en qué medida estos cambios son de origen antropogénico. Por eso, fácilmente se olvida que nuestro planeta está sujeto a cambios ambientales de origen "natural". Uno de estos fenómenos es El Niño. Esta corriente tiene consecuencias ecológicas profundas, a veces catastróficas, en los ecosistemas marinos y terrestres del Pacífico.