Marc J Silberberger

National Marine Fisheries Research Institute · Department of Fisheries Oceanography and Marine Ecology

An important goal for ecosystem‐based management is to protect marine habitats and their associated fauna. Understanding the spatial structure and interrelationships of benthic communities and their underlying environmental drivers, therefore, is of great importance. The benthic community off the sub‐Arctic Lofoten‐Vesterålen islands was studied on...

Benthic food‐web structure and organic matter (OM) utilization are important for marine ecosystem functioning. In response to environmental changes related to the ongoing climate change, however, many benthic species are shifting their ranges to colder regions, which may lead to altered community composition, but it remains largely unknown how it w...

The early development of many benthic invertebrates involves planktonic larval stages enabling larvae to disperse over large distances and to utilize food from the productive upper water layers. Although many past studies have recognized the importance of this period in the benthic life cycle, knowledge of larval distribution in time and space rema...

Benthic fluxes of oxygen and carbon in coastal zones are poorly resolved in mechanistic models due to the lack of understanding of the diverse interactions among the physical, chemical, and biological drivers of biogeochemical fluxes. To inform modelling efforts we used ex-situ incubation experiments to identify spatial and seasonal patterns of oxy...

The Baltic Sea, with its semi-enclosed and nutrient-rich waters, can serve for compelling case studies to understand coastal dynamics amidst anthropogenic pressures. We assessed the levels of benthic disturbance across various coastal locations along the southern Baltic, focusing on water and sediment parameters and benthic community structure. We...

In the light of high carbon dioxide emissions and the progressing climate change, blue carbon solutions and climate feedback loops have received much attention. Here I study biological traits of Mollusca along a latitudinal gradient to demonstrate that outstanding high biomass stocks in shallow (< 150m) Arctic fjord sediments are associated with la...

Organic matter (OM) resources shape not only the trophic diversity of benthic communities but also the diversity of benthic functional traits. The resulting community structure has a direct effect on many ecosystem processes and functions. Still, the relationship between functional diversity of marine benthos and its trophic diversity in response t...

This study reviews the available and published knowledge of the interactions between permafrost and groundwater. In its content, the paper focuses mainly on groundwater recharge and discharge in the Arctic and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The study revealed that the geochemical composition of groundwater is site-specific and varies significantly with...

Amid the alarming atmospheric and oceanic warming rates taking place in the Arctic, western fjords around the Svalbard archipelago are experiencing an increased frequency of warm water intrusions in recent decades, causing ecological shifts in their ecosystems. However, hardly anything is known about their potential impacts on the until recently co...

Macrobenthos is an important component of organic carbon storage and energy flow in marine systems, including these impacted by riverine discharge and high share of allochthonous organic matter (OM). Changing environmental conditions, such as lower precipitation and snow cover duration, may affect patterns of riverine input, therefore it is crucial...

Spatial and seasonal changes in benthic fluxes of dissolved silica (DSi) across the coastal zones were investigated in the southern Baltic Sea. Measurements were performed using ex situ incubations of sediment cores with natural benthic assemblages. Obtained benthic fluxes ranged from the uptake of −1.11 mmol m⁻² d⁻¹ in summer to a release of 6.79...

Multi-fjord studies require resources and time usually not afforded to academic projects. We used data from environmental monitoring surveys to conduct an extensive multi-fjord study that allowed us to explore large scale patterns of benthic communities of fjords along the Norwegian coast. We found a distinction between the subarctic Finnmark subpr...

The quantity and quality of organic matter (OM) available for macrobenthos vary on temporal and spatial scale, especially in coastal areas, where the seafloor is supplied by both seasonal pulses of primary production and terrestrial carbon transported by rivers. Human-induced environmental changes will alter OM transport to the seafloor, thus, it i...

Mesozooplankton research in high latitude ecosystems tends to focus on different life stages of Calanus spp. due to its biomass dominance and trophic roles. However, a complex seasonal succession of abundant smaller mesozooplankton taxa suggests that the ecological functioning of the mesozooplankton communities is more complicated. We studied the y...

In this study we used compound-specific carbon isotope analysis of amino acids (δ¹³CAA) to determine organic carbon sources utilized by the dominant benthic bivalve species collected along a latitudinal gradient in the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas, specifically at productivity hotspots identified within the Distributed Biological Observatory (D...

Stable isotope analysis has become one of the most widely used techniques in ecological studies. However, there are still uncertainties about the effects of sample preservation and pre-treatment on the ecological interpretation of stable isotope data and especially on Bayesian stable isotope mixing models. Here, Bayesian mixing models were used to...

Stable isotope analysis has become one of the most widely used techniques in ecology. However, uncertainties about the effects of sample preservation and pre-treatment on the ecological interpretation of stable isotope data and especially on Bayesian stable isotope mixing models remain. Here, Bayesian mixing models were used to study how three diff...

Fjords are unique geomorphological features that are found globally along (previously) glaciated coasts. They are characteristic for the entire Norwegian coast, where growing human populations and economic development increasingly impact the associated fjord ecosystems, and accordingly basic knowledge about ecosystem structure and functioning is ne...

Studies of trophic interactions give valuable insights into the functioning of ecosystems and can be used to identify qualitative differences among ecosystems. Here, we use natural stable isotope concentrations (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) to study the food-web structure in four contrasting locations on the northern European continental shelf: two sub-Arctic lo...

Benthic habitats provide a variety of ecosystem services, including food production, carbon sequestration, or nutrient cycling. To protect these services for future generations, benthic communities and the ecological processes related to them need to receive the appropriate attention in an area‐based management. Hence, knowledge of relevant spatial...

Eelgrass meadows are a common feature in shallow waters along the Norwegian coast, where they provide a habitat for a diverse infaunal community. Recreational boat anchoring and moorings physically scour seagrass and may affect the ecosystem functioning and resilience of the system to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. A small-scale eelgrass (...