The MASTS Marine Climate Change Forum is excited to host a free Open Forum Session with 2 interesting talks!
Speaker: Dr Heather Sugden, Newcastle University
Anthropogenic climate change has been re-shaping biogeographic patterns of species, causing shifts at all levels of ecosystem, alongside driving phenological changes. Such responses at all levels of biological organization are ultimately driven by temperature change, especially in marine invertebrate and macroalgae species.
Within assemblages the composition and relative abundance of species with different thermal affinities are being re-sorted. Disturbance due to extreme weather events is superimposed upon these long-term patterns of response to climate. Greater amplitude and more frequent return times of extreme events are already occurring and predicted to accelerate, themselves being symptoms of climate change. Both extreme events and pervasive climate change will have direct effects on individuals and hence populations, with consequences for community structure and ecosystem functioning. This is especially so when the species affected are important foundation species and/or ecosystem engineers, dominating space and providing biogenic habitat for others, often by ameliorating environmental conditions.
Historic records have helped to build a picture of intertidal rocky shore communities from the 1900s from several biogeographic areas when there was a groundswell of amateur naturalists. The MarClim project was conceived to bring together historical records across the biogeographic distribution of the UK regional seas and continue to monitor intertidal species taken from these records to track movements of key indicator species. Surveys track the abundance and distribution of 87 species of invertebrates and macroalgae at 100 sites around the UK Regional Seas and northern France on an annual basis. The project has recorded some of the fastest distributional shifts in leading and trailing range edges of species in any natural system and spans over half a century. Using these long-term data, alongside short-term observational and experimental studies provide an opportunity to investigate the impacts of short term change through extreme events, versus longer-term sustained shifts in species abundance and community composition.
Speaker: Dr Johanne Vad, University of Edinburgh
Most of the United Kingdom’s deep sea (deeper than 200 m) is in Scottish waters. Scotland’s deep sea, is around four times bigger than Scotland itself and hosts a diverse range of habitats, such as submarine ridges, banks, seamounts, coral and sponge reefs, expansive soft sediments and sand waves. Biodiversity in these deep-sea habitats is extremely high but Scotland’s deep-sea ecosystems are threatened by human-induced climate change, pollution, and the extraction of fish and other resources. Deep-sea environments are generally less variable over short time scales than coastal ecosystems, making deep-sea species and habitats more sensitive to climate change impacts.
The MASTS Deep Sea Research Forum created a Working Group in 2024 to produce an interactive Story Map and accompanying Policy Brief to highlight main climate change drivers and case studies, as well as predictions of future scenarios and recommendations for policymakers and other stakeholders involved.
Images: Header from Emily Hague, Moon Jellyfish from Unsplash
MASTS was founded in 2009 to be a unique collaboration between marine research organisations, government and industry.
Charity Number: SC045259
Company Number: SC485726
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