Final Activity Report Summary - SCALERECPRO (Scale-dependent recruitment processes in soft-sediments and its environmental controls)
The study built on, and further developed, approaches and methodology that had been established during my initial Marie Curie Individual Fellowship in 2003-2005. A large-scale disturbance-recovery field experiment was conducted on the Swedish west coast, where different sized experimental plots were de-faunated and the subsequent recovery of the benthic community followed over time. Similar experiments were then initiated in the Baltic Sea. The patterns elucidated were linked to a comprehensive analysis of long-term benthic monitoring data from the entire open Baltic Sea. In this analysis, the focus was on the relationship between diversity and recovery potential in benthic communities and the role of different intensities and frequencies of hypoxic disturbance for the recovery of the communities.
The results highlight the importance of biodiversity to the resilience and stability of benthic communities. Thus, this project adds to our knowledge on scale-dependence of disturbance and recovery in soft-sediment communities and elucidates mechanisms important in assessing the resilience of these systems.