Soft sediment ecosystem functioning under climate projections at the Cape Verde Basin (North-East Atlantic)

Environmental conditions at the deep seafloor are projected to change under future climate scenarios, which in some cases can already be observed. With climate change, soft-sediment ecosystems are predicted to experience multiple stressors including deoxygenation, acidification, warming, and reduced quantity and quality of POM flux. How this suite of changes will impact benthic ecosystem functioning and consequently ecosystem services is virtually unknown. During the recent iMirabilis2 research cruise, we assessed the impact of temperature and POC flux quality on soft-sediment ecosystem functioning in an ex situ experiment. Cape Verde slope sediments (876 m) were incubated ex situ with ‘fresh’ and ‘degraded’ food input under present-day and future seafloor temperatures to study both single stressor and potentially interactive effects on sediment community oxygen consumption (SCOC).