Best tidal pools in washington8/17/2023 “Increasing variation in key ecological processes can be a signal that an ecosystem is on the verge of a state shift. “In all cases, over time the rates of recovery slowed and also became more variable,” said Sarah Gravem, an Oregon State research scientist who helped lead the study. The heat wave was believed to be behind the deaths of young sea lions in southern California and die-offs of starving sea birds along the Oregon and Washington coasts. A marine heat wave, which came to be known as “the blob,” warmed the waters of the Pacific Northwest, causing less nutrient-dense water and sending ripple effects throughout the food chain. In 20, the West Coast saw a mysterious illness among sea stars that caused a massive die-off. Between 20, the plots were cleared on a yearly basis to see how their responses changed over time.ĭuring the period of study, Oregon’s oceans saw plenty of natural disruption. Menge and his team returned to each site once a month to take pictures of how the intertidal species were repopulating the cleared plots. They also cordoned off plots that were left undisturbed for comparison to the disturbed plots. At each location, they plotted out five areas, each a half-meter square, and cleared them of all organisms observable to the naked eye to mimic an environmental disturbance. They selected sites at three locations on the Oregon coast – Cape Foulweather, south of Depoe Bay Cape Perpetua, near Yachats and Cape Blanco, on the state’s southern coast. They need to be studied over years, not months, so Menge and a team of researchers set out to do just that in 2011. Intertidal ecosystems can be tricky things to study, Menge said, because they often appear to be healthy, even thriving, while nearly imperceptible changes can be indicative of larger problems. “A possibility is that they’ll stop being persistently occupied, what we call basins of attraction, and move into other states.” “Climate change is threatening to destabilize ecological communities,” he said. The findings of Menge and his team, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are troubling. That’s what led Brunce Menge, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University, to start observing Oregon’s tide pools more than a decade ago, watching to see how some of the state’s most dynamic organisms responded to climate change and warming ocean waters. Tide pools are also among the most resilient ecosystems on Earth, able to quickly recover from natural disturbances and bounce back on timescales not seen in many other parts of nature. The rocky intertidal zone, commonly known as tide pools, is home to a rainbow of species – from orange sea stars to bright blue sea anemones to multicolored varieties of seaweed that undulate with the comings and goings of the tides. Even in the gray days of Oregon’s winter, vivid pops of color can be found on the Oregon coast.
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