Ecosystem Tipping Points In an Era of Global Change

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Rationale. Ecological surprises challenge science and society. While the nature and timing of abrupt changes in ecological organization and function remain poorly understood, emerging evidence points to the existence of these tipping points across a variety of ecosystems worldwide; from lakes to deserts, to coral reefs and kelp forests. While the need to understand ecosystem tipping points has become even more pressing in this era of global change, unraveling the mechanisms governing their behavior is notoriously difficult because it requires understanding phenomena that occur on very different scales of space, time and ecological organization. My Long-Term Goal is to understand the mechanisms governing the behavior of ecological tipping points to improve our ability to anticipate their occurrence and better adapt to the ecological and social transformations that transpire. By pursuing ecological studies on kelp forest ecosystems and ancient clam gardens across broad scales of space and time, my research will provide general insights into the behavior of ecosystems prone to tipping points, simultaneously advancing fundamental ecological theory while illuminating practical ways to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems today. Short-Term Objectives for Kelp Ecosystem Research. 1. Reconstruct late Holocene s blue carbon assets. Short-Term Objectives for Clam Garden Research. 4. Test if techniques used to improve sediment quality and reduce predation pressure further magnify clam productivity and if the addition of shell hash increases the buffering capacity of clams to ocean acidification, 5. Scale this work up with a large collaborative clam garden reconstruction experiment to test these results at an ecologically and socially meaningful scale. Impact. By linking the past to the present with ecological processes operating across spatial scales, the research I propose here will advance our understanding of the behavior of ecosystems prone to tipping points. Combining retrospective and contemporary data will reveal the extent of structural and functional changes in food webs, clarify underlying causes and rates of ecological change due to predator loss, and demonstrate achievable goals for ecosystem management of our coastal oceans, a key policy objective in Canada's Oceans Act. Illuminating the behavior of ecosystem tipping points will allow us to avert collapse or better adapt to it.