Ecosystem Tipping Points In an Era of Global Change

理由。生态惊喜挑战科学和社会。虽然人们对生态组织和功能突变的性质和时间仍然知之甚少，但新出现的证据表明，从湖泊到沙漠，再到珊瑚礁和海带森林，全世界各种生态系统都存在这些临界点。虽然在这个全球变化的时代，理解生态系统临界点的需求变得更加紧迫，但要解开控制其行为的机制是非常困难的，因为它需要理解发生在非常不同的空间尺度上的现象，时间和生态组织。我的长-长期目标是了解生态临界点行为的机制，以提高我们预测其发生的能力，更好地适应随之而来的生态和社会变革。通过在广阔的空间和时间尺度上对海带森林生态系统和古代蛤蜊园进行生态研究，我的研究将为生态系统的行为提供一般性的见解，同时推进基本的生态理论，同时阐明提高社会生态系统的弹性和适应能力的实用方法。海带生态系统研究的短期目标。1.重建晚全新世的蓝色碳资产。蛤蜊园研究的短期目标。4.测试用于改善沉积物质量和减少捕食压力的技术是否进一步放大了蛤蜊的生产力，以及添加贝壳散是否增加了蛤蜊对海洋酸化的缓冲能力。通过一个大型的合作蛤蜊园重建实验来扩大这项工作的规模，以在生态和社会意义上测试这些结果。通过将过去与现在与跨空间尺度的生态过程联系起来，我在这里提出的研究将促进我们对生态系统倾向于临界点的行为的理解。将回顾性和当代数据相结合，将揭示食物网结构和功能变化的程度，澄清由于捕食者损失而导致的生态变化的根本原因和速度，并展示我们沿海海洋生态系统管理的可实现目标，这是加拿大海洋法的一个关键政策目标。阐明生态系统临界点的行为将使我们能够避免崩溃或更好地适应它。

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.