Sea Ice Ecologist

Dr Klaus Meiners

Dr Meiners been working at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre since 2005, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies (USA) and receiving a PhD (2002) and MSc (1999) in Biological Oceanography from Kiel University (Germany). Since 2010, he has been employed as a research scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division.

His work, strongly dependent on collaboration with sea-ice physicists, biogeochemists and ecosystem modelers, centers on the structuring role of Antarctic sea ice in Southern Ocean ecosystem function. Dr Meiners’ main focus has been research on the dynamics of ice-associated algal communities and their importance for Antarctic marine food webs.


social & academic profiles

Current Research

Dr Meiners contributes to the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre “Biological response to environmental change” and “Sea ice processes and change” projects. He is using a combination of laboratory experiments, field-experiments and data-mining to understand the impacts of changing sea ice conditions on Antarctic marine ecosystems.

Current activities include:

Projects to understand links between ice algal distribution and physical sea ice properties in the Antarctic pack ice and fast ice zones.

Sea ice ecological and biogeochemical research on nutrient cycling, dissolved and particulate carbon dynamics, and sea ice algal primary productivity.

Development of bio-optical methods to measure sea ice algal biomass on medium scales using Remotely Operated Vehicles.

The overall aim of this work is to inform and evaluate modeling approaches.



Authorised by the CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre October 2019.

The ACE CRC was established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program.

core participants

 

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other participants

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