Author: Joint Us-Ussr Central Pacific Exped St

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9781330550748

Excerpt from Results of the First Joint Us-USSR Central Pacific Expedition (Berpac): Autumn 1988 Included here in its entirety is the BERPAC Program paper, published in 1991 [J. F. Turner, H. J. O'Connor, Yu. A. Izrael, and A. V. Tsyban (eds.) (1991)]: BERPAC - A Program for Long-term Ecological Research of Ecosystems of the Bering and Chukchi Seas and the Pacific Ocean. National Fund for the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Bowie, Maryland]. BERPAC refers to joint research of the US and USSR in the Bering Sea and Central Pacific Ocean since 1977. The Bering Sea portion of the project has included three joint research expeditions (1977, 1984, and 1988) between the two countries. The central Pacific portions of the project was established in 1988 when the first joint expedition took place. The central Pacific segment, therefore, has not had the opportunity to go through the same maturing process as that of the Bering Sea. As time goes on, and research continues, goals and objectives to be accomplished will be further developed. The paper is included here as a Foreword to show the correlation with this volume's sister monograph. Results if the Third Joint US-USSR Bering & Chukchi Seas Expeditions (BERPAC). Summer 1988. A Program for Long-term Ecological Research of Ecosystems of the Bering and Chukchi Seas and the Pacific Ocean Introduction Deterioration of ecosystems on a large scale threatens many functional equilibria in the biosphere. This problem is particularly urgent for the World Ocean, which is the sink for many different pollutants that can produce significant ecological impacts. The ocean is able to assimilate a certain amount of anthropogenic compounds due to self-purification without visible deterioration of the ecosystem. However, continuous increase in the flux of pollutants to the ocean creates the need for study of the resistance of marine ecosystems to anthropogenic impacts. Investigations of ecological consequences and elucidation of causal relationships between the impact levels and adverse biological effects are only poorly understood for the marine environment. The study of these interactions and responses is interdisciplinary in character and covers different fields of biology, ecology, chemistry, and physics of the sea. The dynamics of marine ecosystems, including biological and physical processes and biogeochemical cycles, are closely related to changes in the climate of the Earth. The predicted global warming may have a pronounced effect on certain vital processes in the World Ocean, especially the resistance of its ecosystems to anthropogenic contamination. This is because the living ocean determines, to a great degree, the normal functions of the Earths climatic system. Long-term observations of physical, geochemical, and hydrobiological processes are necessary for the assessment of ecological consequences of contamination in the ocean environment and isolation of local anthropogenic effects compared to the effect of climatic variability. The Bering Sea is located between the coasts of the Soviet Far East (USSR) and Alaska (USA), and naturally an interest in the study of its ecosystems has been shown by Soviet and American scientists (Izrael Tsyban, 1983a, 1977, 1990; Roscigno, 1990). In spite of comprehensive studies carried out in the Bering Sea in the last few years (Izrael et al., 1988b; Izrael Tsyban, 1989, 1990; Coachman, 1990; Roscigno, 1990), a number of the oceanographic, hydrochemical. and biological parameters determining its ecosystem functions are as yet poorly known when compared with, for instance, the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas. For example, the joint bilateral program of Bering/Chukchi investigations have been carried out for more than 13 years with the production of three monographs of cruise results. However, the as yet inadequate data on the characteristics and processes occurring in the ecosystems of the Bering