Microbial community dynamics in the Arctic Kongsfjorden: changes in abundances, activity and composition

Recent climate changes in Arctic regions have caused retreat of glaciers, increases in meltwater outflow and massive inputs of suspended sediment load to the coastal marine environment (Malone et al., 2016). Moreover, climate warming in the Arctic can potentially affect large-scale microbial processes including population dynamics and trophic level interactions. Viral, prokaryotic and phytoplanktonic communities play a key role in relevant processes such as carbon fluxes and nutrient regeneration and can be viewed both as sentinels and amplifiers of global change. Monitoring of environmental changes, especially those related to ice melting, requires the availability of advanced technologies, able to promptly record phenomena occurring at different spatial and time scales. Moreover, the development of new sampling technology in extreme environments can be used in areas not reachable by vessels or subject to oil spill. In the context of ARCA project the main aims of our research unit were: i) to assess the variability of planktonic abundance and activities over short time scales in a site of the study area; ii) to design and built an automatic sampler for extreme polar environments; iii) to search for cold-adapted OIL/PAH(Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons)-degrading bacteria in the Arctic region.