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Trait-based framework to predict relative vulnerability of near-coastal species and habitats to climate change
Citation:
Lee, H., D. Reusser, C. Folger, K. Marko, R. Graham, AND M. Hanshumaker. Trait-based framework to predict relative vulnerability of near-coastal species and habitats to climate change. Presented at Pacific Northwest Climate Science, Seattle, WA, September 09 - 10, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation will discuss the methodology for using a trait-based approach to evaluate near shore marine species' risks to climate change stressor.
Description:
Like Icarus, near-coastal species are “flying too close” to the sun, and are being impacted by climate-induced changes in air and ocean temperature, precipitation, salinity, ocean pH, and sea level rise. Sound management requires knowledge of what species and habitats are at the greatest risk and which climate changes are the major stressors. To address this issue, we are developing a trait-based framework to predict the relative vulnerability of near-coastal species based on available information: biogeographic distributions, habitat attributes (e.g., depth ranges), physiological limits, relative abundances at a regional scale, population trends, and niche specialization. The biotic data are synthesized and the vulnerabilities calculated in a web-based system, the Coastal Biogeographic Risk Analysis Tool (CBRAT). Vulnerability is assessed at the “Marine Ecosystems of the World” (MEOW) ecoregion scale, covering the species that occur in the 12 ecoregions spanning the Gulf of California to the Beaufort Sea. The framework has been applied to all the rockfish (Sebastes spp.) and brachyuran and lithodid crabs that occur at <200 m in these 12 ecoregions (total 462 species). One-hundred sixty (43.5%) brachyuran crabs, 10 (50%) lithodid crabs, and 39 (52.7%) rockfish were assigned high climate vulnerability in one or more MEOW ecoregion. Traits associated with high vulnerabilities differed among crabs and rockfish. Among crabs, high vulnerabilities most frequently resulted because species are obligate symbionts (59 species), have exclusively intertidal distributions (57 species), or are endemic (48 species). In comparison, high vulnerabilities in rockfish most frequently resulted from the likely interaction of climate change impacts and population declines due to overfishing (21 species).