Living on the Edge of Two Changing Worlds: Forecasting Responses to Climate Change in Rocky Intertidal Ecosystems
Brian Helmuth, Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina
3 Mar 2006
Responses of intertidal invertebrates and algae to climate change can occur rapidly. To date, most studies have focused on large-scale patterns, specifically at shifts in poleward and equatorial margins of range boundaries. Recent work has emphasized how local "modifying factors" can overwhelm large-scale climatic gradients, leading to a mosaic of responses to climate-related environmental stress. I will discuss how changes in the mean and variability in climatic regimes, as modified by local factors such as tides and wave splash, can lead to complex patterns of thermal stress along geographic gradients. I will then describe how ecological forecasting approaches (heat budget modeling using remote sensing data as inputs) can be used to generate explicit hypotheses regarding the likely impacts of climatic change on the distribution of intertidal species, when combined with information on physiological performance, behavior and propagule dispersal. These hypotheses can then be tested over a hierarchy of temporal and spatial scales using coupled field and laboratory-based approaches.