US-Chile Planning Visit: Ecological Forecasting of Intertidal Ecosystems in Chile

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This U.S - Chile Planning Visit proposal will support four senior and one junior researchers and two students from the U.S., under the direction of Dr. Brian Helmuth of University of South Carolina-Columbia, on a planning visit to Chile in July 2009. The primary goal of this visit is to develop a collaboration between researchers at University of South Carolina, Columbia, University of California-Santa Barbara, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile. In this collaboration, researchers will develop and test mathematical models for predicting how climate change will affect marine communities, specifically intertidal organisms along the Chilean coastline. The team will meet with Dr. Sergio Navarrete of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, one of the leading marine ecologists in Chile, and Dr. Bernardo Broitman of Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile, an expert in biophysical coupling. During the visit, the researchers will select study sites for further analysis, collect preliminary data for their model, and a develop a strategy for future collaborations. The investigators plan to submit joint proposals to NSF and FONDECYT, the Chilean funding agency. The visit will involve one early-career researcher and two students, one graduate and one undergraduate. It has the potential to generate a series of future comparative studies on marine communities in the northern and southern hemispheres and will further our understanding of climate change effects on coastal ecosystems.