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- MARUM Research Seminar 2023
- Christian Mohn
Motion, commotion and biophysical connections at seamounts and carbonate mounds
The global ocean seafloor is covered with tens of thousands of seamounts and carbonate mounds that often harbor unique habitats and hotspots of marine life in remote oceanic areas with otherwise low productivity and biodiversity. Seamounts and carbonate mounds interact with the surrounding currents and alter ocean conditions locally and globally. They support specialist benthic communities, as well as a diverse associated fauna, although it remains unclear, how such communities thrive in an often food-limited environment. Local and persistent hydrodynamic hotspots maintaining high advection rates of suspended organic material seem therefore a prerequisite for the persistence and well-being of benthic organisms. Seamounts and carbonate mounds generate a wide spectrum of locally enhanced flow phenomena including energetic internal waves and create vigorous mixing, thus enhancing productivity, biomass, and biodiversity. This presentation reviews the most important concepts and mechanisms of local scale flow-topography interaction at seamounts and carbonate mounds and their importance for species communities.
