Marine ecosystems are an important part of our earth and climate system: they are home to a wide variety of animal and plant species, produce about half of the oxygen in our atmosphere and provide humans with food. However, their structures and functions are changing under the influence of human activities and climate change: overfishing and pollution, tourism or warming water and changes in ocean circulation are affecting marine ecosystems. In order to better understand how they react to the dynamics of the Earth-human system and how they adapt, the Advanced Institute for Marine Ecosystem Change (AIMEC) was founded, under the direction of Japan's Tohoku University and the Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology JAMSTEC. The Alfred Wegener Institute is part of the new institute.
The AIMEC combines scientific expertise from the fields of marine physics, ecology, mathematics and data science to form the new interdisciplinary field "Ocean-Ecosystem Change Systematics" (OECS). Through this, researchers want to deepen the understanding of how oceans and their ecosystems react to environmental and climate change, how stable they are and how they adapt. They will then translate their knowledge into numerical models that map positive and negative feedbacks for marine ecosystem services. AIMEC thus makes an important contribution to systematically evaluating the measures that we as humans can take to protect the ocean and its ecosystems.
The AWI is contributing its expertise in the areas of (bio)geochemistry of the water column and sediments, the cycling of trace substances/metals and biogeochemical transport-reaction modelling, as well as its extensive experience in the fields of marine ecology, marine physics, oceanography and data science. "With AIMEC, we can more efficiently pool and strengthen our joint research activities and better use shared resources to significantly advance our understanding of how the ocean system's response and adapt to changes," says Sabine Kasten, marine geochemist, who represents the AWI as PI and one of the responsible international scientists within AIMEC.
Japan's Tohoku University and the Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology JAMSTEC operate AIMEC together with the University of Hawaii and are supported by international partner institutions. In addition to the AWI, these include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California San Diego and the Nanyang Technological University.