An adventure beyond borders: Ellen Oldenburg and Ovidiu Popa discovered the fascinating world of the Arctic in 2022. In an unforgettable expedition, they plunged deep into the icy depths of the Arctic Ocean. The results of this expedition have not only been recorded in a detailed cruise report, but have also been published in three scientific papers: “Atlantic Water Influx and Sea-Ice Cover Drive Taxonomic and Functional Shifts in Arctic Marine Bacterial Communities”, “Sea-Ice Melt Determines Seasonal Phytoplankton Dynamics and Delimits the Habitat of Temperate Atlantic Taxa as the Arctic Ocean Atlantifies”, and “Multiomics in the central Arctic Ocean for benchmarking biodiversity change”.
These findings, summarised in a dossier entitled “Expedition ins Nordpolarmeer” (see the full dossier here), reveal both the fascinating diversity of the Arctic and the changes taking place in its ecosystems. Their work sheds light not only on the transformative power of Atlantic water and its influence on Arctic communities, but also on the importance of melting ice masses for phytoplankton dynamics.
