Laura Castro de la Guardia

Norwegian Polar Institute

The northwestern Barents Sea (NW-BS) is a highly productive region within the transitional zones of an Atlantic to Arctic-dominated marine ecosystem. The steep latitudinal gradients in sea ice concentration, Atlantic and Arctic Water, offer an opportunity to test hypotheses on physical drivers of spatial and temporal variability of net primary prod...

Kelps are a dominant macrophyte group and primary producer in Arctic nearshore waters that provide significant services to the coastal ecosystem. The quantification of these services in the Arctic is constrained, however, by limited estimates of kelp depth extent, which creates uncertainties in the area covered by kelp. Here, we test the environmen...

Climate change has affected the Arctic Ocean (AO) and its marginal seas significantly. The reduction of sea ice in the Arctic region has altered the magnitude of photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) entering the water column, impacting primary productivity. Increasing cloudiness in the atmosphere and rising turbidity in the coastal waters o...

We present ΔO2/Ar‐based estimates of mixed layer net community production (NCP) from three summer cruises in the North American Arctic and Subarctic oceans. Coupling shipboard underway and discrete observations with output from an ocean circulation model, we correct the NCP estimates for vertical mixing fluxes impacting the surface O2 budget. Large...

Northern Baffin Bay is distinct due to the presence of the North Water Polynya, a region referred to as “Pikialasorsuaq” by Inuit in Greenland and “Sarvarjuaq” by Inuit in Canada. Surrounding communities rely on the polynya as hunting and shipping grounds for much of the year due to its lower sea ice concentration and high primary productivity; how...

The coastal zone of the Canadian Arctic represents 10% of the world’s coastline and is one of the most rapidly changing marine regions on the planet. To predict the consequences of these environmental changes, a better understanding of how environmental gradients shape coastal habitat structure in this area is required. We quantified the abundance...

The coastal zone of the Canadian Arctic represents 10% of the world’s coastline and is one of the most rapidly changing marine regions on the planet. To predict the consequences of these environmental changes, a better understanding of how environmental gradients shape coastal habitat structure in this area is required. We quantified the abundance...

Plain Language Summary Baffin Bay exports cold and fresh Arctic Water to the North Atlantic while receiving northward flowing warm and saline Atlantic Water. This warm Atlantic Water has been shown to drive the retreat of tidewater glaciers. Periods of enhanced Atlantic Water transport into Baffin Bay have been observed. The oceanic processes that...

In this analysis, we examine relative contributions from climate change and river discharge regulation to changes in marine conditions in the Hudson Bay Complex using a subset of five atmospheric forcing scenarios from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), river discharge data from the Hydrological Predictions for the Environme...

The long‐term trend of increasing phytoplankton net primary production (NPP) in the Arctic correlates with increasing light penetration due to sea ice loss. However, recent studies suggest that enhanced stormy wind mixing may also play a significant role enhancing NPP. Here, we isolate the role of sea ice and stormy winds (hereafter high‐frequency...

Maximum temperatures, salinities and northward velocities of the WGIW (Water mass above the east upper slope) occurred in autumn. ② Seasonal atmospheric temperature variations have a significant effect on the temperature cycle on the shelf, and it reaches a maximum temperature for summer months. ③ From the sea bottom to the surface, the seawater in...

The annual phytoplankton bloom is an important marine event and its inter-annual variability can be used to monitor changes in the pelagic ecosystem. In this context, the use of a bio-regionalization analysis to objectively identify ocean areas that differ in their biological characteristics and environmental conditions may be useful to disentangle...

Remote sensing has allowed insights into changing Arctic sea ice, but seasonal underestimation of ice presence may lead to misinterpretation of species behavior. We use the dependence of polar bears Ursus maritimus on sea ice to assess the utility of satellite-linked radio collar locations to indicate underestimation in sea ice on 2 ice data sets d...

Greenland Ice Sheet meltwater runoff has been increasing in recent decades, especially in the southwest and the northeast. To determine the impact of this accelerating meltwater flux on Baffin Bay, we examine 8 numerical experiments using an ocean-sea-ice model: NEMO. Enhanced runoff causes shoreward-increasing sea surface height and strengthens th...

Deep-water agglutinated foraminifera on the crest of the Hovgârd Ridge, west of Spitsbergen, consist mostly of large tubular astrorhizids. At a boxcore station collected from the crest of Hovgârd Ridge at a water depth of 1169 m, the sediment surface was covered with patches of large (1 mm diameter) tubular forms, belonging mostly to the species As...

Sea ice across the Arctic is declining and altering physical characteristics of marine ecosystems. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have been identified as vulnerable to changes in sea ice conditions. We use sea ice projections for the Canadian Arctic Archipelago from 2006 - 2100 to gain insight into the conservation challenges for polar bears with re...