INDECOSTAB · Developing and testing spatial indicators of ecosystem stability for subtidal seascapes
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-03-22 → 2024-03-21
- EU contribution
- €205,970
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Developing and testing spatial indicators of ecosystem stability for subtidal seascapes
Coral reefs are being threatened worldwide due to ocean warming, acidification, or other sources of local stress such as pollution. This has triggered in many areas the degradation of reefs into algae-dominated seascapes, where coral cover and biodiversity is often much lower, and unable to support essential ecosystem services. This has prompted researchers to find new approaches to identify coral communities that are endangered and at risk of such degradation. This projects uses mathematical models and detailed spatial data to help identifying which coral communities are at risk of degradation, and which ones may be more resilient in the short term. We use the coral communities of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) as model system. This isolated island in the south-pacific constitutes the limit of tropical corals, which are mainly threatened by ocean warming, and associated heatwaves that can trigger large-scale mortality events. Our models and novel large-scale spatial surveys of coral communities help identify under which environmental conditions coral communities are able to persist, and which critical levels in disturbance are not to be exceeded. This effort goes along with a growing effort on the island to better understand, manage and protect these vibrant coral communities that are essential for fishing, touristic activities (such as recreational diving) and support species of commercial interest.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Predicting upcoming changes in ecosystems has become one of the priorities of current ecological research and conservation. This is especially crucial for ecosystems where large, durable ecological shifts – hereafter regime shifts – may occur following an increase in stressors (e.g. ocean temperature) or after perturbation events (e.g. hurricanes, fisheries). Because experimentally investigating regime shifts in ecosystems often requires large, impractical disturbance experiments, mathematical models have been used to investigate the factors underpinning such shifts, and predict where and when they might occur in a given ecosystem. This research effort has led to the development of indicators (metrics) based on the observed spatial structure of an ecosystem, which can inform on the proximity of a regime shift. While this approach has been explored for terrestrial ecosystems, virtually no work has been done to apply it to marine ecosystems, and in particular sub-tidal systems (e.g. coral reefs, algal beds). Yet, at least 500 million people depend on these ecosystems at global scale, and their potential for regime shifts in the current context of global changes has been extensively reported by the scientific and global policy literature. This project aims at opening a new research avenue by extending the previous approaches designed for terrestrial ecosystems to develop novel indicators of upcoming regime shifts for sub-tidal systems. We will do so by successively (1) develop a realistic, spatially-explicit model of ecological dynamics, using the coastal ecosystems of Easter Island as model systems; (2) derive indicators of upcoming shifts in coral reefs and algal beds and validate them on empirical data, and; (3) implement our results in widely-available software. Achieving these goals will advance our ability to predict regime shifts and ultimately provide globally-applicable indicators of ecosystem fragility for sub-tidal systems.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT · UtrechtCoordinatorNetherlands
- PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE CHILE · SantiagoChile
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union