Impact of climate change on Arctic macroalgal communities

Lebrun, Anaïs; Comeau, Steeve; Gazeau, Frédéric; Gattuso, Jean-Pierre

doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2022.103980

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 182 publications

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“…On the expansion zones, the new forests in previously unfavourable regions, like the Arctic, may boost regional biodiversity levels and ecosystem services (Dijkstra et al., 2017), including carbon sequestration (Krause‐Jensen & Duarte, 2016), or disrupt biotic interactions, by outcompeting native species and changing community composition (Fossheim et al., 2015). Additionally, the expansion of kelp forests can decrease the abundance and diversity of species not associated with them, like sessile invertebrates or suspension feeders (Lebrun et al., 2022). In the threatened regions, in contrast, losses may have profound and far‐reaching consequences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kelp forest diversity under projected end‐of‐century climate change

Assis,

Fragkopoulou,

Gouvêa

et al. 2024

Diversity and Distributions

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AimFuture climate change threatens marine forests across the world, potentially disrupting ecosystem function and services. Nonetheless, the direction and intensity of climate‐induced changes in kelp forest biodiversity remain unknown, precluding well‐informed conservation and management practices.LocationGlobal.MethodsWe use machine‐learning models to forecast global changes in species richness and community composition of 105 kelp forest species under contrasting Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios of climate change (decade 2090–2100): one aligned with the Paris Agreement and another of substantially higher emissions.ResultsA poleward and depth shift in species distributions is forecasted, translating into ~15% less area in the extent of the global biome, coupled with marked regional biodiversity changes. Community composition changes are mostly projected in the Arctic, the Northern Pacific and Atlantic, and Australasia, owing to poleward range expansions and wide low latitude losses.Main ConclusionsBy surpassing the Paris Agreement expectations, species reshuffling may simplify and impair ecosystem services in numerous temperate regions of Australasia, Southern Africa, Southern America and the Northern Atlantic, and in the tropical Pacific, where complete species losses were projected without replacement. These estimates, flagging threatened regions and species, as well as refugial areas of population persistence, can now inform conservation, management and restoration practices considering future climate change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kelp forest diversity under projected end‐of‐century climate change

Assis,

Fragkopoulou,

Gouvêa

et al. 2024

Diversity and Distributions

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“…Here, the formation, melting and persistence of sea ice drives seasonal patterns of coastal productivity, breeding and feeding opportunities, and connectivity (Le Moullec and Bender, 2022). Sea ice can be disruptive, through processes like benthic scouring, but can also be protective, through processes like buffering of coastal erosion (Lebrun et al, 2022). Irrespective, loss of ice in Arctic coastal systems can have cascading impacts (Meredith et al, 2019;Cooley et al, 2022), including the poleward movement of primary productivity driven by spring melt, with concomitant impacts for benthic and pelagic communities and the predators that feed on these (Brandt et al, 2023), including iconic species such as polar bears and walruses (Lebrun et al, 2022;Alabia et al, 2023;Kellner et al, 2023).…”

Section: Ice Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sea ice can be disruptive, through processes like benthic scouring, but can also be protective, through processes like buffering of coastal erosion (Lebrun et al, 2022). Irrespective, loss of ice in Arctic coastal systems can have cascading impacts (Meredith et al, 2019;Cooley et al, 2022), including the poleward movement of primary productivity driven by spring melt, with concomitant impacts for benthic and pelagic communities and the predators that feed on these (Brandt et al, 2023), including iconic species such as polar bears and walruses (Lebrun et al, 2022;Alabia et al, 2023;Kellner et al, 2023). Changes in ice phenology also impact phenology and breeding success among seabirds (Cusset et al, 2019;Descamps et al, 2019;Golubova, 2021).…”

Section: Ice Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the ecological consequences of climate change in coastal ecosystems

Schoeman,

Bolin,

Cooley

2023

Camb. prisms Coast. futures

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Few coastal ecosystems remain untouched by direct human activities, and none are unimpacted by anthropogenic climate change. These drivers interact with and exacerbate each other in complex ways, yielding a mosaic of ecological consequences that range from adaptive responses, such as geographic range shifts and changes in phenology, to severe impacts, such as mass mortalities, ecological regime shifts and loss of biodiversity. Identifying the role of climate change in these phenomena requires corroborating evidence from multiple lines of evidence, including laboratory experiments, field observations, numerical models and palaeorecords. Yet few studies can confidently quantify the magnitude of the effect attributable solely to climate change, because climate change seldom acts alone in coastal ecosystems. Projections of future risk are further complicated by scenario uncertainty – that is, our lack of knowledge about the degree to which humanity will mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions, or will make changes to the other ways we impact coastal ecosystems. Irrespective, ocean warming would be impossible to reverse before the end of the century, and sea levels are likely to continue to rise for centuries and remain elevated for millennia. Therefore, future risks to coastal ecosystems from climate change are projected to mirror the impacts already observed, with severity escalating with cumulative emissions. Promising avenues for progress beyond such qualitative assessments include collaborative modelling initiatives, such as model intercomparison projects, and the use of a broader range of knowledge systems. But we can reduce risks to coastal ecosystems by rapidly reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, by restoring damaged habitats, by regulating non-climate stressors using climate-smart conservation actions, and by implementing inclusive coastal-zone management approaches, especially those involving nature-based solutions.

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“…Dissolved organic matter, which affects PAR availability, may also be altering benthic ecology (Sejr et al, 2022) or otherwise negatively affecting macroalgae communities (Niedzwiedz & Bischof, 2023). Understanding these changes is important and timely, as shallow Arctic fjord communities are predicted to shift from invertebratedominated to algal-dominated communities (Kortsch et al, 2012;Lebrun et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Underwater light environment in Arctic fjords

Schlegel,

Singh,

Gentili

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Most inhabitants of the Arctic live near the coastline, including fjord systems where socio-ecological coupling with coastal communities is dominant. It is therefore critically important that the key aspects of Arctic fjords be measured as well as possible. Much work has been done to monitor temperature and salinity, but an in-depth knowledge of the light environment throughout Arctic fjords is lacking. This is particularly problematic knowing the importance of light for benthic ecosystem engineers such as macroalgae, which also play a major role in ecosystem function. Here we document the creation and implementation of a high resolution (~50–150 m) gridded dataset for surface photosynthetically available radiation (PAR), diffuse attenuation of PAR through the water column (KPAR), and PAR available at the seafloor (bottom PAR) for seven Arctic fjords distributed throughout Svalbard, Greenland, and Norway, during the period 2003–2022. In addition to bottom PAR being available at a monthly resolution over this time period, all variables are available as a global average, annual averages, and monthly climatologies. Throughout most Arctic fjords, the interannual variability of monthly bottom PAR is too large to determine any long term trends. However, in some fjords, bottom PAR has increased in spring and autumn, and decreased in summer. While a full investigation into these causes is beyond the scope of the description of the dataset presented here, it is hypothesised that this shift is due to a decrease in seasonal ice cover (i.e. enhanced surface PAR) in the shoulder seasons, and an increase in coastal runoff (i.e. increased turbidity/decreased surface PAR) in summer. A demonstration of the usability of the dataset is given by showing how it can be combined with known PAR requirements of macroalgae to track the change in time of the potential distribution area for macroalgal habitats within fjords. The dataset (Gentili et al., 2023a) is available on PANGAEA at: https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.962895. A toolbox for download and working with this dataset is available in the form of the FjordLight R package, which is available via CRAN (Gentili et al., 2023b), or may be installed via GitHub: https://face-it-project.github.io/FjordLight (last access: 8 December 2023).

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Impact of climate change on Arctic macroalgal communities

Cited by 15 publications

References 182 publications

Kelp forest diversity under projected end‐of‐century climate change

Kelp forest diversity under projected end‐of‐century climate change

Quantifying the ecological consequences of climate change in coastal ecosystems

Underwater light environment in Arctic fjords

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