Mr Isaac Rosenthal1, Jarrett Byrnes1, Laura Trouille2, Kyle Cavanaugh3
1University Of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, USA, 2The Adler Planetarium – Zooniverse, Chicago, USA, 3University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA
Environmental drivers can interact across multiple scales, potentially resulting in nonlinear outcomes. Additionally, global processes such as climate change may be exacerbated by local stressors such as habitat degradation or pollution. It is important that we understand how the combined effects of these synergistic stressors will impact vulnerable ecosystems in order to best inform management decisions.
Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) forests are one such ecosystem. Warming oceans threaten Macrocystis across much of its global distribution, but it is also vulnerable to a host of local stressors such as sediment pollution or nutrient runoff. The most susceptible areas are those in proximity to large population centers, which presents some concern given the increasing rate of human migration to coastal cities.
In order to understand how these stressors may be interacting to threaten Macrocystis forests, we classified kelp canopy cover in thousands of satellite images as part of the Floating Forests online citizen science project (www.floatingforests.org), hosted on The Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org). We processed a set of images spanning back to 1985, focused on the cities of Los Angeles – California, USA, Hobart – Tasmania, Australia, and Ushuaia – Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. We modeled kelp population trends as a function of both urbanization and temperature change, and compared outcomes between kelp populations in close proximity to urban areas and those in more pristine waters. This work serves to build our understanding of both the efficacy of current environmental regulations, as well as how these ecosystems may be affected by future human development.
Biography:
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