| NSF Org: |
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 26, 2021 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 26, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 2140335 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Daniel J. Thornhill
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | April 15, 2021 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $166,185.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $166,185.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
266 WOODS HOLE RD WOODS HOLE MA US 02543-1535 (508)289-3542 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
266 Woods Hole Rd Woods Hole MA US 02543-1535 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Populations of organisms located in different, often far-apart places can change over time in similar ways. This natural phenomenon, known as synchrony, is important to many issues affecting societal well-being, such as those in medicine, public health, conservation, and natural resource management. For instance, synchrony is critical to the persistence, stability, and resilience of plant and animal populations, and can have cascading effects on biodiversity, ecosystem function, and associated benefits to society. However, many aspects of synchrony are poorly resolved. For example, understanding the influence of multiple potential drivers of synchrony?such as climatic events and predators?has been a longstanding challenge in ecology. Moreover, the causes of synchrony may change over space, time, and timescale (e.g., annual vs. decadal synchrony), but this potential is rarely explored, especially in marine ecosystems. The consequences of synchrony for the dynamics of diverse ecological communities, and the potential for synchrony to have cascading effects across ecosystem boundaries (e.g., from sea to land), are also understudied. Addressing these gaps is especially pressing because growing evidence indicates that climate change may alter patterns of synchrony, potentially leading to diminished spatial resilience of ecosystems. This project studies coastal kelp forests and sandy beach ecosystems to address several current gaps in the understanding of synchrony. The project generates knowledge to improve the understanding of these economically-valuable environments and the many organisms that they sustain. Broader impacts extend through the mentorship of researchers across career stages and student training in coastal ecology and data science. To improve educational opportunities for students from groups underrepresented in science, the project creates a Coastal-Heartland Marine Biology Exchange, in which undergraduates from the Midwest travel to California to carry out coastal field research, and undergraduates from Los Angeles interested in marine biology travel to Kansas to learn biostatistics. To benefit the management of kelp forests in California that have suffered dramatic declines in recent years, workshops will be hosted with coastal managers, conservation practitioners, and other stakeholders to identify restoration sites to enhance regional recovery, stability, and resilience. Methods, software, and data that are useable across scientific disciplines are published online following reproducible and transparent standards.
The objective of this project is to investigate the patterns and causes of synchrony in giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) forests and the consequences for coastal ecosystem structure and function. By integrating and leveraging numerous long-term, large-scale datasets and analyzing them with new statistical techniques, the investigators assess how oceanographic conditions, propagule dispersal, and sea urchin herbivory interact to structure the synchrony and stability of giant kelp populations over the past 36 years across 10 degrees of latitude in the northeast Pacific Ocean. New wavelet modeling tools and other statistical techniques are used to quantify the drivers of synchrony and how they operate across geography, time, and timescales. Using a 20-year spatial timeseries of reef biodiversity, it will be determined how giant kelp and other factors induce synchrony in a speciose community of understory algae through ?cascades of synchrony?. Moreover, the team tests the degree to which giant kelp synchrony propagates across ecosystem boundaries to sandy beaches through the transport and deposition of allochthonous organic matter (kelp wrack), and how such spatial subsidies produce bottom-up cascades of synchrony to beach invertebrates and shorebirds.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Giant kelp forests are a vital part of coastal ecosystems, providing shelter and food for marine life while supporting critical ecological processes such as carbon storage and nutrient cycling. In this project, we wanted to understand how environmental factors like waves, nutrients, and climate drive the stability, growth, and synchrony of giant kelp populations along the coast of California. Synchrony refers to the way kelp populations grow and decline in unison, which can reveal broader ecological patterns and vulnerabilities. The research also examined how kelp forests influence neighboring ecosystems and how changes in their health affect broader marine dynamics.
To tackle these questions, developed a 40-year satellite record of kelp canopy size spanning 900 kilometers of coastline, along with data on waves, sea surface temperature, and nutrient levels. These datasets were paired with advanced statistical tools like wavelet modeling, allowing scientists to analyze patterns over different timescales and regions. The study has expanded its scope to include additional kelp species and regions, covering the entire U.S. West Coast and extending into Baja California, Mexico.
Our work revealed that environmental factors like waves and nutrients interact in complex ways to influence kelp synchrony, with these effects varying by location and time. In central California, for example, waves and nutrients often work together to enhance synchrony, while in southern California, these interactions sometimes reduce it, especially over longer timescales. The study also highlights the importance of long-term climate variability, such as the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO), which plays a key role in kelp synchrony over multi-year periods. These insights demonstrate that understanding kelp stability requires examining how environmental drivers amplify or counteract each other.
Another focus of the project is how kelp affects neighboring ecosystems. We investigated how kelp wrack supports food webs on sandy beaches. By analyzing how kelp’s growth or decline impacts the transport and deposition of wrack, our work connected kelp forests to adjacent coastal ecosystems, providing a broader perspective on their ecological importance. These findings are crucial for understanding how kelp forests interact with their environment and how changes in one part of the system ripple through others.
Beyond its ecological insights, our work has made significant technical advancements, including the development of new tools to analyze kelp data. These tools have improved the ability to track kelp populations, estimate nutrient levels using sea surface temperature, and understand the interactions between environmental factors. This methodological progress provides a foundation for future studies and makes the data more accessible to researchers and conservationists.
Ultimately, our research sheds light on the intricate dynamics of kelp forests and their role in marine ecosystems. It highlights the importance of understanding environmental drivers, such as ocean waves and nutrient availability, and their interactions. These findings are essential for predicting how kelp forests will respond to challenges like long-term climate change and short-term marine heat waves, offering critical guidance for conservation and management efforts.
Last Modified: 11/26/2024
Modified by: Thomas Bell
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