Climate change impacts on Canada's Northwest Atlantic Ocean ecosystem: observations, projections, and implications

气候变化对加拿大西北大西洋生态系统的影响：观测、预测和影响

• 批准号: RGPIN-2021-02395
• 负责人: Lotze, Heike
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 依托单位: Dalhousie University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=745791
• 关键词: Climate; change; impacts; Canada; Northwest

Coastal ecosystems are critical components of our biosphere and provide essential services to humans. Deeply transformed over historical times, they continue to be altered by changing human activities. My research program aims to quantify the magnitude of such changes in marine species, habitats, and ecosystems. Over the past 6 years, we have made substantial progress in understanding past and present consequences of exploitation, habitat alteration, pollution, and warming, and have advanced climate-change projection. Most climate-impact projections are employed on global scales with coarse resolution, and little is known how these compare to regional changes. This will be my work's focus over the next 5 years. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of current and expected changes in marine species, habitats, and ecosystems in Canada's Northwest Atlantic Ocean under different climate-change scenarios over the 21st century. We will build on our previous empirical and modeling studies, expand to other species and habitats, integrate new measures of community and ecosystem change, and contrast regional with global projections. Species-distribution models will project changes in selected commercial species, key habitats, species-at-risk, and invasive species, which will be combined to evaluate hotspots of biodiversity gains, losses, and turnover. Community-level changes with warming waters will be analysed from research trawl surveys and fisheries catch statistics to resolve changes among species, functional and taxonomic groups, and across management areas. Future changes in ecosystem structure and function will be assessed by contrasting regional with global climate and ecosystem models to evaluate shifts in primary and secondary production, food-web composition, and ecosystem indicators under different climate-change scenarios. We will employ multi-model ensembles to compare different approaches and compute model-averaged trends and uncertainty estimates. All results will be integrated to assess implications for management and conservation. For example, maps of shifting species, habitats, and ecosystems will be overlaid with marine protected areas to quantify which areas may serve as climate refugia or hotspots of change, and which may require adaptive measures to ensure effective biodiversity protection under climate change. The proposed research will advance our state of knowledge on climate-change impacts in Canada's ocean and provide insight into how mitigation efforts can halt or reverse projected changes. State-of-the-art ensemble modeling will evaluate the influence of different climate-change assessment approaches which is crucial for decision-making. Our work will inform future marine conservation planning, sustainable fisheries, ecosystem management, and climate-change adaptation for the benefit of Canadians.

沿海生态系统是生物圈的重要组成部分，为人类提供基本服务。它们在历史时期发生了深刻的变化，并随着人类活动的变化而不断改变。我的研究项目旨在量化海洋物种、栖息地和生态系统的此类变化的程度。在过去的六年里，我们在了解过去和现在的开发、栖息地改变、污染和变暖的后果方面取得了实质性进展，并推进了气候变化预测。大多数气候影响预测都是在全球范围内进行的，分辨率较低，但很少有人知道它们与区域变化的比较。这将是我未来5年的工作重点。我们的目标是全面了解 21 世纪不同气候变化情景下加拿大西北大西洋海洋物种、栖息地和生态系统当前和预期的变化。我们将在之前的实证和模型研究的基础上，扩展到其他物种和栖息地，整合群落和生态系统变化的新措施，并将区域预测与全球预测进行对比。物种分布模型将预测选定的商业物种、关键栖息地、濒危物种和入侵物种的变化，将这些变化结合起来评估生物多样性增益、损失和周转的热点。将通过研究拖网调查和渔业捕捞统计数据来分析随水域变暖而发生的社区层面的变化，以解决物种、功能和分类群之间以及跨管理区域之间的变化。将通过对比区域与全球气候和生态系统模型来评估生态系统结构和功能的未来变化，以评估不同气候变化情景下初级和次级生产、食物网组成和生态系统指标的变化。我们将采用多模型集成来比较不同的方法并计算模型平均趋势和不确定性估计。所有结果将被整合以评估对管理和保护的影响。例如，不断变化的物种、栖息地和生态系统的地图将与海洋保护区重叠，以量化哪些区域可以作为气候避难所或变化热点，以及哪些区域可能需要采取适应性措施，以确保在气候变化下有效保护生物多样性。拟议的研究将增进我们对加拿大海洋气候变化影响的了解，并深入了解缓解努力如何阻止或扭转预计的变化。最先进的集成模型将评估不同气候变化评估方法的影响，这对决策至关重要。我们的工作将为未来的海洋保护规划、可持续渔业、生态系统管理和气候变化适应提供信息，造福加拿大人。