from meltwater drives diatom blooms, a highly productive group of phytoplankton that enable such fjords to be valuable feeding grounds for other species. It is possible that as climate change reduces long-term meltwater output, nutrient dynamics within such fjords will shift to favor less productive species, destabilizing the food web ecology of fjord systems.

In addition to nutrient flux, sediment carried by flowing glaciers can become suspended in the water column,