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DECRA Research Fellow | University of Western Australia, Researcher | Institute of Marine Research in NorwayKeynote Theme: Global Change and Human ImpactsKaren is a DECRA Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and a researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway. Her research focuses on the ecological impacts of climate change on the functioning of kelp forests. This includes understanding drivers and patterns of long-term change in kelp ecosystems, estimating seaweed carbon cycling and storage potential, and documenting climate-driven expansion of kelp forests in some Arctic regions. Karen is from Nova Scotia, Canada and has a PhD in kelp forest ecology from Dalhousie University. She completed a postdoc on kelp carbon export in the Norwegian Arctic at NIVA and held an NSERC Fellowship at Laval University studying kelp forests in the eastern Canadian Arctic. Her current work in Western Australia and Norway centres on kelp blue carbon and kelp restoration.
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Presentation: Kelp forest ecology in the Anthropocene: using distributed experiments to scale up inferences
Humans are transforming coastal ecosystems globally, and a key challenge for ecology in the Anthropocene is to match the scale of observation and inference with the scale of current and future impacts. This brings focus to the fundamental need to translate the power of small-scale ecological experiments to test hypotheses about mechanisms causing ecological change at regional and global scales. Here I give several examples of how broadly distributed experiments can reveal general patterns of kelp forest function (e.g., growth, decomposition) and common mechanisms of kelp loss and resilience (e.g., mortality thresholds, stabilizing feedbacks) at ocean basin scales. Further, field measures of kelp forest abundance and ecological structure at sites spanning both temperate to Arctic and temperate to tropical environments can inform predictions about possible consequences of borealisation and tropicalization, as these transition zones are the front lines of climate-driven ecological change. Emerging transformations include the replacement of scattered high Arctic kelp communities with high-biomass temperate kelp forests, and the loss of kelp and shifts to turf and coral-dominance. There is substantial spatial-temporal variability in key ecological processes, which can be important for resolving local and regional stability (and instability) of kelp forests and their function. Still, general patterns of change emerge across the range of kelp forests, providing a strong impetus for engaging in their management, restoration, and protection in order to secure our continued benefits from these ecosystems, including carbon cycling and habitat provision.
