Recovering a lost baseline: missing kelp forests from a metropolitan coast
Recovering a lost baseline: missing kelp forests from a metropolitan coast
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DOI：
10.3354/meps07526
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发表时间：
2008-01-01
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Cheshire, Anthony
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Connell, Sean D.;Russell, Bayden D.;Cheshire, Anthony
人们担心全球温带海岸线上树冠形成藻类的历史和持续损失。在南澳大利亚，阿德莱德大都会海岸上稀疏的树冠形成藻类一直是公众关注的问题，多年来的轶事证据最终形成了两种相互竞争的观点。一种观点认为，目前的模式在城市化开始之前就存在，而另一种观点认为，它们是在城市化之后发展起来的。我们测试了假设来区分这两种模型，每个模型都以大都市海岸树冠的历史覆盖重建为中心。从历史上看，大都市遗址与70公里范围内的当代参考遗址难以区分。（即圣文森特湾），也可以代表大生物地理省2100公里范围内暴露的沿海地点的随机子集。因此，在历史上，这些大都市遗址并没有什么“特别之处”，但今天，它们脱颖而出，因为与海湾和更大省份的同等地点和时间相比，它们的树冠覆盖较少。这是自大规模城市化以来，阿德莱德大都会海岸部分地区树冠形成藻类大量减少（高达70%）的证据。这些发现不仅设定了一个基于损失规模的研究议程，而且还提出了一个逻辑问题，即相对于较大的大都市中心，较小的大都市人口产生的影响微不足道。相反，我们强调有必要认识到，生态环境使一些沿海系统更容易受到人类对世界海岸线日益增长的控制，或者更有抵抗力。我们讨论了这类研究面临的挑战，这些挑战很少得到生态学的讨论，特别是更好的领导和管理，认识到我们研究的系统比单个研究小组的寿命更长，并且在超出单个研究提供者能力的空间尺度上运行。
There is concern about historical and continuing loss of canopy-forming algae across the world's temperate coastline. In South Australia, the sparse cover of canopy-forming algae on the Adelaide metropolitan coast has been of public concern with continuous years of anecdotal evidence culminating in 2 competing views. One view considers that current patterns existed before the onset of urbanisation, whereas the alternate view is that they developed after urbanisation. We tested hypotheses to distinguish between these 2 models, each centred on the reconstruction of historical covers of canopies on the metropolitan coast. Historically, the metropolitan sites were indistinguishable from contemporary populations of reference sites across 70 km. (i.e. Gulf St. Vincent), and could also represent a random subset of exposed coastal sites across 2100 km. of the greater biogeographic province. Thus there was nothing 'special' about the metropolitan sites historically, but today they stand out because they have sparser covers of canopies compared to equivalent locations and times in the gulf and the greater province. This is evidence of wholesale loss of canopy-forming algae (up to 70%) on parts of the Adelaide metropolitan coast since major urbanisation. These findings not only set a research agenda based on the magnitude of loss, but they also bring into question the logic that smaller metropolitan populations of humans create impacts that are trivial relative to that of larger metropolitan centres. Instead, we highlight a need to recognise the ecological context that makes some coastal systems more vulnerable or resistant to increasing human-domination of the world's coastlines. We discuss challenges to this kind of research that receive little ecological discussion, particularly better leadership and administration, recognising that the systems we study out-live the life spans of individual research groups and operate on spatial scales that exceed the capacity of single research providers.