Sustaining Biodiversity and Functioning in a Changing Ocean

人类活动对海洋生物的影响日益加剧，这对保护推动全球海洋这一地球最大的生态系统和生命支持系统的各种生物群和过程的努力提出了挑战。事实上，可持续性是我们这个时代面临的重大科学和社会挑战之一。令人望而生畏的空间和时间尺度、多种人类活动(包括导致气候变化的活动)的累积影响以及许多动态和复杂的海洋过程对我们维持海洋生物多样性以及健康、正常运作的生态系统的努力提出了挑战。这些挑战需要应用尖端技术和新的保护思想，以统一生态研究的许多方面，这些方面可以而且应该影响加拿大及其他地区的可持续海洋努力。这里提出的研究将把野外和实验室实验与新的观测数据结合起来，为保护策略提供依据。特别是，这项工作强调了不同环境之间的功能作用、人口和生态系统连通性以及它们的变化如何有助于形成可持续利用战略。这项提议的长期目标是评估自然环境在面对日益增加的人类压力时维持关键生态系统功能和服务的能力，并帮助制定支持这一自然能力的战略。

The accelerating impacts of human activities on ocean life challenge efforts to conserve the diverse biota and processes that drive the global ocean, Earth's largest ecosystem and life support system. Indeed, sustainability represents one of the great scientific and societal challenges of our time. Daunting spatial and temporal scales, cumulative impacts of multiple human activities (including those resulting in climate change), and many dynamic and complex oceanographic processes challenge our efforts to sustain ocean biodiversity as well as healthy, functioning, ecosystems. These challenges require application of leading edge technologies and new conservation ideas to unite the many facets of ecological research that can and should influence sustainable ocean efforts in Canada and beyond. The research proposed here will combine field and laboratory experiments with novel observational data to inform conservation strategies. In particular, this work emphasizes how functional roles, population and ecosystem connectivity among different environments, and changes in them could help to shape sustainable use strategies. The long-term objective of this proposal is to evaluate the capacity of natural environments to sustain critical ecosystem functions and services in the face of increasing human pressures, and help to develop strategies to support that natural capacity.