Anthropogenic Perturbations of Arctic Marine Microbial Community

Diverse ecosystems including the Arctic marine community provide numerous essential services to humans due to the presence plus activities of the microbial organics dwelling in it. In the cold seeps are microbial mats comprised of different populations of methane- and sulfide-oxidizing bacteria and anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea (ANME) with sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), thereby ensuring the amount of methane reaching the seafloor and water column. However, periodic disturbances across the sediment–water interface influence these marine coastal sediments, thereby ensuring diversity maintenance and impacting many of the Earth’s ecosystems. These disturbances emanate from the dissipation of energetic flows of varying strengths and at differential temporal scales in the benthic boundary layer. Varied disturbances and climate change have affected these Arctic marine ecosystems and the services they provide, the well-being of humans that depend on these services, and cascading effects cum feedbacks across social-ecological systems (SES) such as when sea-ice loss that alters food security through changes in the distribution of marine animals. In furtherance, as the high variability of ice cover and temperature subsists, the frequency and magnitude of marine heatwaves tend to increase globally and disrupt the provision of ecosystem services in decades to come. Consequences of these anticipated changes will present significant challenges to coastal communities and commercial dependents of living marine resources and can exacerbate unexpected turnouts such as deterministic microbial community assembly, and promote the development of alternative stable conditions. Current investigation approaches have been strategized to the anthropogenic processes to facilitate amelioration of the challenges encountered. Thus, the identification of these cascading changes in SES can forestall surprised outcomes of these anthropogenic perturbations and facilitate revamped responses from policymakers.