You are here:
The Icarus challenge - Predicting vulnerability to climate change using an algorithm-based species' trait approach
Citation:
Lee, H., C. Folger, D. Reusser, R. Graham, AND Pat Clinton. The Icarus challenge - Predicting vulnerability to climate change using an algorithm-based species' trait approach. PICES, San Diegeo, CA, November 01 - 11, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
This work was conducted under the Air Climate and Energy (ACE) Program Project 2 - Climate Impacts on Watersheds, Water Quality, and Ecosystems, Task 2.1: Assessing impacts of individual and multiple climate stressors on near-coastal species at a regional. The overall objectives of the research are to 1) develop a practical framework for predicting the relative vulnerability of near-coastal species to individual and multiple climate stressors at regional scales, 2) identify the primary climate stressors impacting specific species and habitats and how risk varies geographically, and 3) use these predictions to inform regionally-specific conservation and adaption strategies including developing geographically-specific climate indicators. Rules to assess the impacts of climate stressors, in particular, sea-level rise, increased sea surface temperature and ocean acidification, are being incorporated into a web-based decision tool, the Coastal Biodiversity Risk Assessment Tool (CBRAT; http://www.cbrat.org/), also being developed as part of this ACE task. CBRAT is intended for EPA and state managers, as well as serving as a research and public outreach tool to increase our understanding of the threats from climate change.
Description:
The Icarus challenge - Predicting vulnerability to climate change using an algorithm-based species’ trait approachHenry Lee II, Christina Folger, Deborah A. Reusser, Patrick Clinton, and Rene Graham1 U.S. EPA, Western Ecology Division, Newport, OR USA E-mail: lee.henry@epa.gov2 U.S. Geological Survey, Western Fisheries Research Center, Newport, OR, USA (Emeritus)3 Dynamac Corporation, Corvallis, OR, USALike Icarus, the world’s ecological resources are “flying too close” to the sun, and changes in temperature, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification will impact many near-coastal species. Importance of these stressors will vary by species and geographically, though understanding the patterns of these impacts is hindered by the large number of coastal species. One approach to this challenge is assessing vulnerability from species’ traits, including biogeographic distributions, depth distributions, and life history attributes. A major advantage is the ability to assess thousands of species using generally available information. Current applications of trait-based climate analyses have relied on expert opinion, but these have the potential limitations of biases, lack of transparency and repeatability, and difficulty in updating analyzes. To address these limitations, we developed an “algorithm-based” approach, where vulnerability in an ecoregion is automatically calculated from synthesized traits using a set of a priori rules. We are applying the approach to the brachyuran and lithodid crabs (381 species) and rockfish (74 species) over 12 Marine Ecosystems of World ecoregions (Gulf of California through Beaufort Sea), with the vulnerability analysis implemented in a web-based tool (CBRAT). Patterns emerging from preliminary analyses include: 1) impacts of increases in sea-surface temperature are primarily limited to the southernmost occupied ecoregion for a species; 2) sea level rise will have minor impacts on crabs in Alaska compared to those in Puget Sound through Southern California; 3) decapods appear more resilient to ocean acidification than many other taxa, but may be at high risk in the Arctic.