Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve

19 Aug, 05 AM - 26 Aug, 05 AM

The rocky intertidal zone is a model ecosystem for evaluating the impacts of weather, climate, and climate change on natural ecosystems, as animals and plants living in this habitat frequently live very close to their thermal tolerance limits. However, in order to quantify the ecological impacts of climate change, we must first understand how the body temperatures of these organisms vary in space and time. New sensor networks deployed via buoy, satellite and shore-based systems provide an unprecedented data source for examining the effects of weather and climate on coastal organisms. To an organism, however, the physical environment extends only to its immediate habitat, and as it moves through space and time it samples these microhabitats in ways that vary greatly upon organism morphology, size and behavior. As a result, two organisms exposed to identical physical environments can experience radically different conditions at the level of the niche. Subsequently, we must “translate” environmental signals measured at large spatial and temporal scales to the level of an organism’s niche if we are to hindcast, nowcast, and forecast the effects of climate and weather on the survival, reproduction and ecological interactions of organisms. Two mechanisms for making these translations are through the use of biophysical models, and through direct measurements made by biomimetic sensors, which collect temperature data directly relevant to an organism’s fitness. We have developed models and sensors for several species of intertidal organisms, specifically the mussel Mytilus californianus and the predatory seastar Pisaster ochraceus. Data relevant to mussels has been collected nearly continuously at a series of 9 sites along the west coast of North America since 1999, and these data show that patterns of physiological stress are likely to be far more complex than those predicted based on measurements at the habitat level (i.e. by buoy or satellite). For example, these data suggest that climate change may not result in simple poleward range shifts, but may instead create a series of localized mortality events at a series of “hot spots” along the west coast of North America. Similarly, we have observed increases in body temperature over the last 5 years that are not reflected by onshore or offshore water or air temperature measurements, but instead are the result of complex interactions between multiple environmental parameters. We will retrieve instruments at four sites, we deployed previous years and complete a thorough topographical survey of our study sites to investigate the ongoing and future impacts of climate change on predator-prey interactions between Pisaster and Mytilus.

Visit #33299 @Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 25890 | Research

Environmental signal analysis: monitoring the impacts f climate change on rocky intertidal ecosystems across a cascade of scales

research_assistant - University of South Carolina

Reservation Members(s)

Allison Matzelle Aug 19 - 26, 2013 (8 days)
Francis Choi Aug 19 - 26, 2013 (8 days)

Reserve Resources(s) | Create Invoice

Day Use Only 1 Aug 19 (6 hours)