Building Foundational Knowledge of the Central Arctic Ocean Ecosystem

For the past 10 years, the Working Group on the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment of the Central Arctic Ocean (WGICA) has been dedicated to synthesizing knowledge on the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) ecosystem. This is a joint working group under the umbrella of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES, the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), and the Arctic Council working group on the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME). The group is composed of researchers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, USA and Canada with expertise in physics, biogeochemistry, human activities, and the ecology of species from the surface to the seafloor. WGICA draws on knowledge from other ICES and Arctic Council working groups and contributes to many international initiatives including the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement, OSPAR, and WWF.

Figure 1: The CAO area covered by WGICA including the CAO Large Marine Ecosystem and High Seas area adjacent to the exclusive economic zones of the USA, Canada, Greenland (Kingdom of Denmark), Norway and Russia.

In recent years, this working group has published a series of reports on the CAO ecosystem including a description of the overall ecosystem (http://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.8007), a climate assessment report (https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.31898674), and a description of human activities, pressures and vulnerabilities (https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.30540437).

For the report on human activities, WGICA experts collated available data on 11 pressures identified from ship traffic (shipping, military, tourism and science activities) and from global sources outside the CAO (i.e. introductions of non-indigenous species, contaminants, marine litter). A formal scoring exercise was then conducted for each ecosystem component (microbes, primary producers, sea ice fauna, benthos, fish, seabirds, and marine mammals) in which the exposure and vulnerability to these pressures were assessed. A manuscript detailing the methods and results is currently under review.

The status of knowledge of the climate and human pressures in the CAO were summarized in an infographic and used to communicate the findings and to a wide range of stakeholders and policy makers.

Figure 2. Infographic summarizing the state of climatic change and human pressures on components of the CAO ecosystem.

After significant efforts toward these products in the past decade, WGICA has identified priorities of activities during 2026-2028 which include:

• Mapping vulnerable and fragile species, communities and habitats in the CAO (in sea ice, pelagic and seabed)
• Mapping climate and environmental change and establishment of commercial fishing in CAO
• Mapping pressures from human activities - exploratory fishing and shipping
• Cumulative/interactive effects of pressures on vulnerable species and habitats

There are several CAO research activities that Akvaplan-niva is involved in including the Fram Centre program SUDARCO, Polhavet 2050, many individual research projects, and participation in expert groups like WGICA. Akvaplan-niva researcher, Amanda Ziegler, has been a member of WGICA since 2022 and co-led the chapter on benthos along with colleagues from other institutes in Norway and the United States for the human activities/vulnerabilities report. She has also contributed to the vulnerability assessment. In the next phase of WGICA, Amanda will be involved in the work relevant to mapping of vulnerable species and ecosystems and cumulative effects.