Unbounded boundaries and shifting baselines: Estuaries and coastal seas in a rapidly changing world

Little, Sally; Spencer, Kate L.; Schuttelaars, Henk M.; Millward, G.E.; Elliott, Michael

doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2017.10.010

Cited by 38 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 104 publications

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“…Although there are many EGS models (Bagstad et al 2013b;Turner et al 2016;Gret-Regamey et al 2017;Little et al 2017), this chapter focuses on models that provide predictions of how EGS may be affected as coastal ecosystems undergo change. We further narrow this focus to models that demonstrate a high degree of utility to decision-makers based on relevant spatial scales and endpoints.…”

Section: Needs To Advance Ebmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps the most optimal solution is a modeling framework that allows users to choose which components, groups, and interactions to include, similar to the modular designs of InVEST and ARIES (Guerry et al 2012;Bagstad et al 2014). With some modification, these tiered or coupled models can allow for the identification and inclusion of multiple drivers and cumulative impacts on coastal and estuarine EGS, which is a critical need (Carpenter et al 2009;Chan and Ruckelshaus 2010;Little et al 2017).…”

Section: Emerging Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Projecting Changes to Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystem Goods and Services—Models and Tools

Lewis

Marois

Littles

et al. 2020

Ecosystem-Based Management, Ecosystem Services and Aquatic Biodiversity

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Coasts and estuaries provide an abundance of ecosystem goods and services (EGS) to humans worldwide. Models that track the supply, demand, and change in EGS within these ecosystems provide valuable insights that have applications in the context of land-use planning, decision-making, and coastal community engagement. However, developing models for use in coastal and estuarine ecosystems is challenging given the multitude and variability of potential input variables, largely due to their dynamic nature and extensive use. Models that can incorporate scenarios of environmental change to forecast changes in EGS endpoints are highly valuable to decision-makers, but only a minor proportion of available EGS models offer this utility. In this chapter, we describe the domain of models most useful to coastal decision-makers, present models at multiple scales that can predict EGS changes, and examine specific examples that epitomize this utility. We also highlight common difficulties in modeling coastal and estuarine EGS and propose suggestions for integrating EGS models into the coastal management decision-making process during times of increasing environmental change. Lessons Learned • Identifying the most suitable model(s) given the scale(s) of a particular question or goal is paramount in the modeling process • Uncertainty is an inherent component of modeling that should be wellcommunicated by users to avoid misinterpretation of results

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Section: Needs To Advance Ebmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Emerging Issues and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting Changes to Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystem Goods and Services—Models and Tools

Lewis

Marois

Littles

et al. 2020

Ecosystem-Based Management, Ecosystem Services and Aquatic Biodiversity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The ecosystem is exposed to a number of pressures including: coastal development, oil spills, hurricanes and major hypoxia formation on the continental shelf of Louisiana and Texas. Many of the primary human activities that affect coastal and marine environments occur in the GoM: extraction of living resources, transport and shipping, fossil fuel energy, coastal and land-based infrastructure and industry [2]. These activities result in a number of pressures being placed upon the GoM ecosystem that are both exogenic unmanaged pressures and endogenic managed pressures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting ecosystem components in the Gulf of Mexico and their responses to climate variability with a dynamic Bayesian network model

2019

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The Gulf of Mexico is an ecologically and economically important marine ecosystem that is affected by a variety of natural and anthropogenic pressures. These complex and interacting pressures, together with the dynamic environment of the Gulf, present challenges for the effective management of its resources. The recent adoption of Bayesian networks to ecology allows for the discovery and quantification of complex interactions from data after making only a few assumptions about observations of the system. In this study, we apply Bayesian network models, with different levels of structural complexity and a varying number of hidden variables to account for uncertainty when modeling ecosystem dynamics. From these models, we predict focal ecosystem components within the Gulf of Mexico. The predictive ability of the models varied with their structure. The model that performed best was parameterized through data-driven learning techniques and accounted for multiple ecosystem components’ associations and their interactions with human and natural pressures over time. Then, we altered sea surface temperature in the best performing model to explore the response of different ecosystem components to increased temperature. The magnitude and even direction of predicted responses varied by ecosystem components due to heterogeneity in driving factors and their spatial overlap. Our findings suggest that due to varying components’ sensitivity to drivers, changes in temperature will potentially lead to trade-offs in terms of population productivity. We were able to discover meaningful interactions between ecosystem components and their environment and show how sensitive these relationships are to climate perturbations, which increases our understanding of the potential future response of the system to increasing temperature. Our findings demonstrate that accounting for additional sources of variation, by incorporating multiple interactions and pressures in the model layout, has the potential for gaining deeper insights into the structure and dynamics of ecosystems.

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“…Estuarine and shallow coastal habitats are complex ecosystems of high productivity facing conflicting socio-economic and environmental demands 1 . Estuaries, for instance, are important areas for fisheries and aquaculture production and yet are challenging environments in which to live because of the co-occurrence of fluctuations in salinity, temperature, pH and oxygen on different spatial and temporal scales 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity to near-future CO2 conditions in marine crabs depends on their compensatory capacities for salinity change

Whiteley

Suckling

Ciotti

et al. 2018

Sci Rep

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Marine crabs inhabit shallow coastal/estuarine habitats particularly sensitive to climate change, and yet we know very little about the diversity of their responses to environmental change. We report the effects of a rarely studied, but increasingly prevalent, combination of environmental factors, that of near-future pCO2 (~1000 µatm) and a physiologically relevant 20% reduction in salinity. We focused on two crab species with differing abilities to cope with natural salinity change, and revealed via physiological and molecular studies that salinity had an overriding effect on ion exchange in the osmoregulating shore crab, Carcinus maenas. This species was unaffected by elevated CO2, and was able to hyper-osmoregulate and maintain haemolymph pH homeostasis for at least one year. By contrast, the commercially important edible crab, Cancer pagurus, an osmoconformer, had limited ion-transporting capacities, which were unresponsive to dilute seawater. Elevated CO2 disrupted haemolymph pH homeostasis, but there was some respite in dilute seawater due to a salinity-induced metabolic alkalosis (increase in HCO3− at constant pCO2). Ultimately, Cancer pagurus was poorly equipped to compensate for change, and exposures were limited to 9 months. Failure to understand the full spectrum of species-related vulnerabilities could lead to erroneous predictions of the impacts of a changing marine climate.

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Unbounded boundaries and shifting baselines: Estuaries and coastal seas in a rapidly changing world

Cited by 38 publications

References 104 publications

Projecting Changes to Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystem Goods and Services—Models and Tools

Projecting Changes to Coastal and Estuarine Ecosystem Goods and Services—Models and Tools

Predicting ecosystem components in the Gulf of Mexico and their responses to climate variability with a dynamic Bayesian network model

Sensitivity to near-future CO2 conditions in marine crabs depends on their compensatory capacities for salinity change

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