Continental Margin Ecosystems on a Worldwide Scale (COMARGE)

The continental margins are the ribbons of seafloor beginning at the edge of the continental slope and extending rapidly to abyssal plain depths. They cover a wide geographic area and a wide variety of ocean depths. While it has been known for a long time that the ocean margins are a mixture of rugged mountainous scenery and sediment- covered slopes, 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 biodiversity of continental margin sediments has been better studied than that of abyssal plains, however how the biodiversity changes from region to region remains unknown. The objectives of COMARGE are to describe biodiversity patterns of benthic and bentho-demersal communities on continental margins, with a focus on multiple habitats and spatial scales, and to identify the contribution of environmental heterogeneities to these patterns. Field surveys of continental margins will include novel environments such as submarine canyons, trenches and river mouths.

For more information, please visit the COMARGE website: http://www.ifremer.fr/comarge/en/index.html

COMARGE Project Team

Co-Principal Investigators:
David Billett, Southampton Oceanography Centre, UK
Lisa Levin, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA
Helena Passeri Lavrado, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gilbert Rowe, Texas A&M University, USA

Related Activities

Hotspot Ecosystem Research on the Margins of European Seas (HERMES)

CoML workshop on Deep-Sea Sediments, 22-24 August 2003, Hatfield Marine Science Center, OR, USA: workshop summary