Session I: Bioturbation in a changing ocean: Responses and implications across scales. Environmental change has manifold implication for bioturbation rates through impacts on the distribution, abundance, and activity of bioturbating organisms. This session seeks to give an update on the responses of bioturbating organisms to occasional, periodic, and progressional changes of the physical, chemical and biological environment and how those changes ultimately can lead to bioturbation-mediated changes in ecosystem functioning. Presentations addressing these topics at various spatial and temporal scales are welcome: from individuals to populations, from single burrows to ocean basins, from short time scales relevant to microbially mediated transformations to elemental cycling on geological time scales.
- Responses of bioturbators to environmental change: From behavior to biogeography
- Discerning the effects of environmental stressors on bioturbating organisms: temperature, ocean acidification, hypoxia, salinity, fine particle dynamics
- Consequences of changes in bioturbation for the function of benthic systems
- Bioturbation and the fate of pollutants
Keynote: David Shull (Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, USA) “Bioturbation and organic matter mineralization pathways in the Bering Sea”
Session II: Bioturbation and biogeochemical models: approaches and challenges. Seafloor ecosystems are most often treated as a black box in large scale ecosystem models. In earth sciences, this oversimplification would equate to inconceivably ignoring the influence of soil processes like evaporation, plant growth, and surface hydrology in weather and climate models. The aim of this session is to present recent advances and to identify critical gaps in our ability to model particle and solute transport and biogeochemical processes in the bioturbated zone and to link transport and reaction to benthic fluxes and ecosystem productivity on larger spatial and temporal scales.
- Deterministic, statistical, and stochastic transport – reaction models of particle and solute dynamics
- Approximating a steady state in unsteady systems
- Simplicity versus complexity of benthic processes in large scale ecosystem and global geochemical models
Keynote: Christof Meile (University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA) “Flow from images, and its role in shaping a biogeochemical mosaic”
Session III: Bioturbation and microbes: Conceptual and technical advances. Recent advances in geochemical sensing and molecular tools are revolutionizing our ability to characterize the microenvironment and the microbiology of the animal-sediment complex. This session is intended to update on recent advances in characterizing microbial communities and microbial activity in bioturbated sediments, determining rates of microbially mediated transformations, and exploring how microbes deal with transient conditions and rapid redox oscillations in the bioturbated zone.
- “-omics” in the bioturbated zone
- Redox oscillations, microbial activity and organic matter remineralization
- Cable bacteria and bioturbation
Keynote: Diana Vasquez-Cardenas (NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands) “Bacterial reoxidation in bioturbated and electrogenic sediments”
Session IV: Novel sensors and approaches to study the bioturbated zone. Novel technologies and the increasing spatial and temporal resolutions of sensing techniques is significantly improving our ability to resolve and interpret 2-D and 3-D biogenic structures and associated biogeochemical processes. This session is intended to present novel optical, radiometric, and acoustical sensing techniques to study the bioturbated zone.
Keynote: Emma Michaud (LEMAR, CNRS, Brest, France)
“Assessing biogeomorphology using drones: new perspectives for large-scale bioturbation studies”
Session V: Bioturbation in terrestrial and freshwater systems. Just like the seafloor the functioning and structure of soils and freshwater sediments is strongly influenced by burrowing organisms. This session is intended to foster interaction between terrestrial, freshwater, and marine researchers and identify commonalities and existing diversities in research questions, approaches, and technologies when studying terrestrial soils and aquatic sediments.
Keynote: Mac Callaham (Center for Forest Disturbance Science, Southern Research Station, Athens, GA, USA) “How to make soil: Add parent material, soil animals, roots, weather, and set the blender on liquefy”