The role of sustained observations in tracking impacts of environmental change on marine biodiversity and ecosystems

Abstract

Marine biodiversity currently faces unprecedented threats from multiple pressures arising from human activities. Global drivers such as climate change and ocean acidification interact with regional eutrophication, exploitation of commercial fish stocks and localized pressures including pollution, coastal development and the extraction of aggregates and fuel, causing alteration and degradation of habitats and communities. Segregating natural from anthropogenically induced change in marine ecosystems requires long-term, sustained observations of marine biota. In this review, we outline the history of biological recording in the coastal and shelf seas of the UK and Ireland and highlight where sustained observations have contributed new understanding of how anthropogenic activities have impacted on marine biodiversity. The contributions of sustained observations, from those collected at observatories, single station platforms and multiple-site programmes to the emergent field of multiple stressor impacts research, are discussed, along with implications for management and sustainable governance of marine resources in an era of unprecedented use of the marine environment.

Long-term (1998 vs. 2010) large-scale comparison of soft-bottom benthic macrofauna composition in the Gulf of Lions, NW Mediterranean Sea

“…The composition of benthic macrofauna may, however, vary with time and even the identity of dominant species may change from one year to the other in response to climatic variations. Such changes have been reported by several authors around the world such as in Brazil (Bernadino et al, 2015), in New Zealand (Hewitt et al, 2016), in southwest England (Mieszkowska et al, 2014), in the southern North Sea (Kröncke et al, 1998(Kröncke et al, , 2001(Kröncke et al, , 2011, in western Sweden (Tunberg and Nelson, 1998;Hagberg and Tunberg, 2000) or in the Mediterranean Sea (Grémare et al, 1998a;Salen-Picard et al, 2002;Labrune et al, 2007b). These studies show a direct or indirect effect of climatic variations on macrofauna communities.…”

Closer to the rear edge: ecology and genetic diversity down the core‐edge gradient of a marine macroalga

“…Furthermore, another major drawback to detecting biogeographic patterns has been the scarcity of medium/long-term data series directed to address macroecology of population dynamics. Few studies have highlighted the critical importance of long-term, sustained observations of biota for large scale ecology studies (e.g., Lima et al 2007a, Wethey et al 2011, Mieszkowska et al 2014a, Mieszkowska et al 2014b. Seasonal studies carried out on several consecutive sampling dates have provided stronger support for biogeographic hypotheses relative to snapshot sampling schemes (i.e., one sampling date per year, Defeo et al 2001, Lesica and McCune 2004, Abeli et al 2012).…”

Explaining Ocean Warming: Causes, scale, effects and consequences

“…The 'openness' of intertidal populations, because larvae and propagules are often recruited from outside sources, can often lead to unpredictable variability and patchiness of species distributions both spatially and temporally (Underwood and Fairweather, 1989;Burrows et al, 2010). Disentangling the effects of climate change from species responses to shorter-term fluctuations and natural variability is a challenging, yet key, task for predicting impacts and their subsequent mitigation (Southward et al, 1995;Hawkins et al, 2008Hawkins et al, , 2009Mieszkowska et al, 2014b). IPCC Assessment Reports (2007, 2014 have briefly reported some of the responses to climate change observed in rocky intertidal habitats.…”

“…Southward and Crisp, 1954;Southward, 1963Southward, , 1980Southward, , 1991Southward et al, 1995). They have proved valuable sentinel systems in early detection of recent rapid climate change (Barry et al, 1995;Sagarin et al, 1999;Mieszkowska et al, 2006Mieszkowska et al, , 2014bHawkins et al, 2009), as well as for forecasting and predicting future trends (Helmuth et al, 2006b;Hawkins et al, 2009;Wethey et al, 2011).…”