Resilience of kelp forests to a changing marine environment

Dan Smale is a researcher at Marine Biology Association, Plymouth.

Mechanistic understanding of responses of Swedish kelp species and populations to climate change stressors is almost entirely lacking, despite the widespread distribution and socioecological importance of these species and habitats in the region.

Dan Smale will talk about a project, where they use mesocosms to conduct realistic experiments on critical habitat forming kelp species, faced with increasing threats from ocean warming and concurrent local stressors. They will then compare the findings with similar experiments conducted on the same and other kelp species in other regions to examine the relative resilience of Swedish populations to rapid environmental change. The findings will guide conservation efforts, including the prioritization of management and restoration areas to preserve the optimum kelp functioning and their related ecosystem services.