Climate change projections reveal range shifts of eelgrass Zostera marina in the Northwest Atlantic

Resilience of cold water aquaculture: a review of likely scenarios as climate changes in the Gulf of Maine

“…devoid of toxins and nitrogen levels below eutrophication threat). Changes in characteristics such as temperature can have a significant impact on the reproductive cycles of marine biota and are highly influenced by existing and future climate scenarios (Cartwright et al 2019;Hughes et al 2019;Noor & Das 2019;Rothausler et al 2019;Wilson & Lotze 2019;Azra et al 2020). A significant rain event can transport particulate matter into streams, rivers and estuaries, raising the turbidity of the water and lowering primary production, which can limit bivalve feeding by up to 40% (Lohrer et al 2006).…”

Simulated Estuary-Wide Response of Seagrass (Zostera marina) to Future Scenarios of Temperature and Sea Level

“…The two seagrass species have differing ranges in appropriate habitat, as R. maritima is the more tolerant species to variation in environmental conditions and can survive in mesohaline as well as polyhaline conditions (Wetzel and Penhale, 1983;Evans et al, 1986;Short et al, 2007). Z. marina habitat along the North American Atlantic coast ranges geographically from Greenland to North Carolina, with a maximum depth of 12 m observed in clear water near the northern range limit (Short et al, 2007;Wilson and Lotze, 2019). In BB-LEH, seagrass meadows are found predominantly at depths less than 1 m along the sandy shoals (Kennish, 2001), although Z. marina has been observed down to 4.6 m (see section "Calibration Results"; Lathrop and Haag, 2011;Defne and Ganju, 2015).…”

“…Future iterations of the model which may include dispersal of sexual reproductive propagules could allow for recolonization of grid cells that have lost all biomass. For significantly longer model runs, the model would be improved by incorporating the potential for local adaptation of seagrass to environmental change, as Z. marina demonstrates appreciable plasticity through regional adaptations to different light and temperature climates (Short et al, 2007;Wilson and Lotze, 2019).…”

“…Numerical biomass models are often one-dimensional (Madden and Kemp, 1996;Kenov et al, 2013;Jarvis et al, 2014), but the development of spatially explicit models has expanded their use by incorporating spatially variable environmental conditions and dynamics to describe seagrass habitat and growth across ecosystems (Cerco and Moore, 2001;Baird et al, 2016;DeAngelis and Yurek, 2017). Spatial distributions of seagrass are also modeled using species distribution models (SDMs), a statistical method which relies on the cooccurrence of seagrass habitat with environmental conditions for prediction rather than physiological biomass production equations (Saunders et al, 2014;Valle et al, 2014;Wilson and Lotze, 2019).…”

“…Research using one-dimensional numerical models have demonstrated that exposure to temperatures above the optimal temperature for growth can produce a net decrease in biomass, simulating the physiological tradeoff of reducing photosynthesis rates and increasing respiration rates as temperature rises (Marsh et al, 1986;Jarvis et al, 2014). Studies employing SDMs have projected that increases in temperature will have significant impacts to the geographic range of seagrass habitat, with possible extinctions at latitudinal locations where seagrass are already near their temperature maximum and expansion into locations which were previously below their thermal range (Wilson and Lotze, 2019). While both methods inform our understanding of the effects of rising temperature on seagrass, one-dimensional biomass models do not capture ecosystem-scale dynamics, whereas SDMs cannot describe physiological growth dynamics.…”