Science Area
The COMARGE project came up with the acknowledgement that the biodiversity of continental margins can not be assess nor understand without considering their structural and functional complexity. Indeed, during the past few decades, our understanding of deep continental-margin habitats has changed more than for any other large area of Earth. It is only in recent times, with higher resolution bathymetry and increased bottom sampling, that areas once envisioned as monotonous landscapes are now acknowledged to have a high degree of complexity and diversity. The great variety of geological and hydrological settings on continental slopes produces many different habitats. It is clear that continental margins are both very complex and active regions ecologically, geologically, chemically, and hydrodynamically. Fundamental patterns of species distribution first observed and explained in the context of monotonous slopes must now be re-evaluated in light of the newly recognized heterogeneity. The issues address by COMARGE concern two main scales of margin heterogeneity:
- The environmental variability found along latitude and depth gradients.
To achieve its goals , COMARGE intends to create a network of researchers to facilitate coordination among projects and cruises, to foster data sharing, to support data archiving and finally to assure the maximum synergistic value for continental margin studies. As a first step, the purpose and questions of the project will be disseminated to a wide community of scientists. A challenge of the Census of Marine Life - COMARGE will be to overcome taxonomic impediments in order to disseminate through OBIS comprehensive species lists for a wide range of habitats. COMARGE’s intent, together with others deep-sea CoML field projects, is to foster the development of taxonomic expertise through workshops and exchange of taxonomists.
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