Fiorenza Micheli Presents: Climate change impacts on kelp forest ecosystems

Partake in this is fun She is currently Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Studies. David is a Professor of Marine Science, Senior Fellow of the Whitman Institute at Stanford, a Pew Fellow, a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, Co-Director of the Center for Ocean Solutions, and beloved to all of our hearts, former President of the Western Society of Annapolis. She was actually the one who was able to tell me this, that I was the President of Annapolis, right behind her footsteps. She does everything, right? She goes everywhere, she's been everywhere. The early work in Italy, the later work on the East Coast, and after that, she was all over the planet. A lot of the work when she first got here to the Monterey Bay area was down in Baja, which is great, and she's continued to do that. Everything from fisheries to socio-economic impacts of climate change, and now she's moved on, probably, to the most practical model system on the planet, which is kelp. Although it's, you know, I think it came from an early perspective of grazing on kelp, and now has recognized that kelp is really one of those really interesting canaries in regards to what the effects of climate change will have on ecosystems. So it's awesome to have Theo here. I went and looked at, like you all do, right? I looked at the CV of her friends and see what they've done. In 2018 was the last one I got. She had 194 papers with her name on it. It's apparently now 209 as of yesterday, which is ridiculous. On everything, with everyone, and just looking at Theo's career and what she's done so far, it's just really fun. And so it's great to have you up here amongst a bunch of friends and listening to you talk about something. So welcome, Theo and Shelley. Thank you, everyone. Good afternoon. It's really, really fun to have you here. I want to start, I do want to acknowledge my interpreter for the end, but I want to start by saying thank you to everyone who came out to say a very good day here. It's a special time. Thank you so much, everyone. Joe and I, you're kicking it out today. Thanks to everyone who's here tonight. Over the years, and I probably need my acknowledgment. I just express my gratitude for all of the support that I'm talking about across the board, especially here. It's practically the only place that doesn't know nothing about climate justice. As Mark introduced, climate change is an issue that's over everything and everyone. And this is not just manifesting itself in the form of climate change, but we're seeing it constantly as things, the temperature rise, heat waves, and then the impacts of these pressures are compounded by oxygen, ocean acidification, carbon dioxide, the manifestation of significant heat waves, and so forth. And so it's imperative that we find ways, not just as a society, but as a group of society, to find ways to mitigate the risks and also to adapt to the changes that are coming in order to maintain the heat system and the safety of the climate So, one of the global plans we are going to implement in the climate college is a global plan going to have a particular association with climate justice, such as scholars, students, and others. These are very important, of course, because they are part of the university, they support climate services, and they are performing in accordance, of course, from a diversification and conservation point of view. Intangible systems in this foundation species are caps, and the caps form this unique, very associated with species like man, and also, perhaps, fish. So, I think it's important to start from the third side view of what is happening, and to first, first, develop a global picture of how caps and other types are changing. So, as part of the working group at the National Center for Ecological Sciences and Sympathies, there was met by two other groups. We set out to assemble data on abundances of caps between species and other populations. And so, the resulting data reveals that here, for example, are caps that move in time periods from nearly 50,000 sites and were monitored over the world between features of working caps between 1975 and 1972 with plants of type C growing across. And so, what this meta-analysis has shown is that overall, there is a small global population. Small, but importantly, there is very high variability. And roughly one-third of the regions in the 1910s, but roughly one-third of the regions in the 1960s had high variability. And this high local variability suggests that local systems are very important in dominating the population. So, for example, while in some regions, like Southern California or areas of South Africa, the plants in care are matching temperature trends. And in these cases, for example, the plants were stable or increasing temperature some In other areas, the plants in the health of Africa are strong for the health of the plants. And so, each has its own story. So, example, in Northern Chile, was a very strong health policy in addition to other cases. In other cases, for example, in the Alusian region, the plants were strong for the health of the So, these variable trends are important because they suggest that the national idea of climate and the potential for global action is important in other regions of the world. And we generally point to how global conditions might boost or support these kinds policies. And so, as a complement to global analysis, Jennifer O'Leary also has done a lot of these kinds conditions. when we looked into what were the potential hazards of these conditions, what people also think are the risks of climate change. So I know I've talked about helps so far and I mentioned as many times as I could. But I want to move to thinking about the political system and the standards of peace that have world. And so the question that we have next is how and how support this kind of system. And this is important because we know from papers for example this beautiful paper that Donald Trump has published recently that there are two different kinds of systems. Of course this is the implementation of the world water model. So it's a similar approach where we collaborate with the network of psychologists that includes students like Christopher and Richard who are in Baja California in Macau for the first time world. And so the first thing that we had to do was figure out the way that we could combine culture and history and then we developed a classification of the two of systems which we have developed year. And we developed a classification of the two kinds of systems And so when we basically quantified lives from people who have passed and this is organized here 2008 is the first year have lives from people who passed and this 2008 is the first that we quantified lives from people who have passed and this is the and this is first year that we quantified lives from people who have passed and this is the first year that lives from people who have passed and this is the first year that we quantified lives people who have passed and this is the quantified lives people who passed and this is the first year that we quantified lives from people who and this is the first passed and year that quantified lives and this is the first year that we quantified who have passed and this is the first year that we quantified who passed and this the first year that we quantified people who passed and this the first year that we passed and this is the first year that we quantified people who have passed and this is the year that we quantified people who have passed and this is the first year that we quantified people who have passed and this is first year that we quantified people who have passed and this is the first year that we quantified people who have passed and quantified people who have passed and quantified people who have to experimental stressors, like it's not manually doing, and also to metabolic stressors. So I talked with my new station, these two brilliant PhD students, so they both have students who are in the hospital process, developed and constructed a control system that's going to help the patient, that basically allows them to conduct experiments that will significantly improve the development of this experimental stressor. As well as meeting a point in time of need with a second exposure, which is, and in the future, of course, a conscious choice of coping with a very expensive treatment. So, the idea behind the control system was to develop an experimental step-up that is cheaper, and more easily replicated, than some of the systems that we have developed, is that while still allowing for the kind of experiments that we need to do, to understand the extra costs of implementing dynamic systems, such as the high-quality ecosystems. So, because this system is relatively low-cost and scalable, we were also able to get funding from the National Science Foundation to reconstruct a smaller version of the system, and to have it safe, and there is a small amount of money, so that we can do some kind of small experiments, and also to support experiments that are associated with a high-quality approach. And so, using this system, we have started some experiments that were part of the dissertation of Mr. Anthony, who is a developer, and also we were able to obtain the contents in a citizen-driven way without the help of the system. So, some of the experiments that were conducted in this set-up, for example, were asking the question of how many perspectives and kind of the scope of the work that we were working on, and that interaction with the data was a problem. And so, what we did is first, how did we learn about the data, and then, we set up this part of the challenge of the data sets, and we were able to do this, and we were able to explore the second problem that was the data. And then, we exposed the data to three or four different types of grazers that feed on different subjects. And so, this generated two different articles, and I suppose, juvenile purposes, and adult purposes, perhaps. And then, here, you see, they study what the grazing rates were over a period of a year when the DNA tests were exposed to tissue discoloration. So, this is expressed as the proportion of the room, 30% of the grazers that were exposed, and so, the most negative values of the grazers were the grazers that were exposed. And then, what you see here for the four panels, which are species, is what happens under control conditions, hypoxia only, acidification of RNA, and then, the destruction of RNA. And so, this is a complex graph, but you can see at a glance that basically, what is essential in this research. Basically, lower value means higher grazing rates, so that's more determined. So, that hypoxia, either by itself or combined with acidification, is a stress-related, useful phenomenon. And this was associated with a similar research effect, acidification, for example, as well as the volume distribution. And so, first, which tells us that we need to start looking at this interaction between acid and grazers, but in many different ways. As we were doing this experiment, the expectation was that six years would be the time to do this. Actually, we found that that is always dangerous for a sequence of events. This is a different sequence. And then, the other implication is that this experiment has provided a hypothesis for potential reference from grazing, for example. Because in field experiments, where she tested with different data, so, if she had found enough hypoxia in the water, then she would allow aging experiments with the parrots, over and over, throughout the whole season. And what she found is that the science of the experiment was different. The science of low and high value of acid transformation, grazing, started with this. So, this would provide a state of reference for the field experiments, allowing the prediction of their sizes, and a state of spot of the incredibly high rates of grazing that we saw. Where people found that there was a lot of salt in the water. So, the second application of this system is to start looking at how constant control of exposures might be applied to the species of individuals. And so, this was the matter of the separation of the control system. So, now, this is an example of an exoskeleton with a number about four or five percent. And so, with the control system, she was able to compare the impact of different vegetal fields. So, you can find the low condition, the very low condition of the plant. On things like grazing rates, again, but also, but also other characteristics and variables, like the type of bone health, and the classification rates, and the growth rates of animals and so on. So, there is a distinct physiological and psychological variables. And what we, in this experiment, showed that there is, again, grazing is suppressed under toxic conditions, so it's kind of a constant. But, realistically, the effects are all subliminal. It takes days to get very, extremely high growth rates of a certain animal type. But, there's a little effect in the form of reduction of grazing, in the increase in plasticity of production, the stronger these classification rates, but all over, also, for short-term exposure. And, this brings up, also, potential for number two, additional consequences of that exposure to a decrease of production. So, to, again, point out, set up hypothesis for what kind of overblossing is, it's really important and relevant to the process of stress, as, for example, a disease of excess gluten can lead to cancer of the breast. So, in conclusion, I want to wrap up the findings from the work done at the European States. There's major shifts, of course, associated with animal evolution, and the change in the variety of the ecosystem, including the population of species, for example. But, in the case of cancer, the responses and the impacts are highly, highly, also, pro-viral transplants, of course. And, this is important, of course, when we look at a specific set of diseases, because it provides a good basis for preparations to meet the needs of the environment. So, there's changes, and, also, there is an urgent need to scale up, and speed up, the way that we teach, we are developing solutions, as well as we are developing the standard of education, as well. And so, there is a huge, great potential to join forces, to work partnerships, to work collaboration on the networks, more actively to create the open market, which is, perhaps, more important in the world. Also, develop ways to speed up the development of the health care system, something that is much more diverse. And, then, through the opportunities and local actions, I have been inspired, perhaps, to start a partner, I think, in 2006. There, the post-hoc community, the insurers, the decision-makers, we can believe in conduct of research, of statistical science, of statistical science programs, to improve management of experiments in the Western world, where we have the success of the international community, where the patients, where there is a lot of distribution, a lot of growth, I think that's also possible, this experimental and proactive mentality that has allowed us to learn so much about the medical system, so much to protect it and adapt the changes. So, I think it's a marvel that we can go from an expert to the non-expert, to the benefit of the medical field. And, then, finally, I want to thank lots of people, and, first and foremost, my wonderful lab colleagues, that have done lots of good work, many different collaborations, among that, the University of Madison Association of Health Care. I've been part, I think, of data collection, the official communication with the headquarters and other health care providers. We are very much in part of the health partners Thank you very much. That's good, yes. Yeah, I'm wondering, with what you're learning about climate change and shifts around, if you have any thoughts on what the relevance is to the concept of mobile marine protected areas? That's a hard question, because many of the uses are not mobile, and so, many of my experience is influenced by working with communities that have special rights and have to basically stay booked and deal with changes that come their way. In other contexts, mobile marine protected areas are many practices. Can you talk a little bit about, functionally, what happens with the herbivores in the hypoxic conditions? Are they less active? Do they consume or process less? I mean, what's actually happening there to get those reduced grazing rates? So, what we're seeing in the lab, so human-raised from laboratory study, is that they become jealous, the juvenile avocados, they move less. And then, for example, with the juvenile avocados, after a period of time, physiologically, we have seen that, basically, the amyloid, the number of cells is affected, the cells are damaged, just physiologically, but behavior in the lab, the behavior of the avocados. Urchins are the same, so it's changing behavior. And then, when oxygen conditions go up, for urchins, for example, metabolic rates, oxygen, for example, tend to go up, and water increases. And so, in the long run, we didn't see large changes in their body growth, for example, because of this intensive change. So, it's, yeah, it's almost like a weathering storm, and then they die. Over time, they create a non-cumulative impact, as seen on, so there is a cost to metabolic antibodies, that, in terms of total case, it is reduced, because they lose the other kind of body. It's not reduced before. So, along that same line, your experiment in the lab showed, you know, changes in the oxygen level. The data that you showed for the yearly change was highly variable. Is it changing over half-day portions, and when it's getting low, is there still some portion of the day where the oxygen is recovering? Yes, so, the variability happens on many different scales, and the experiments were based on the median, which is on the order of three, six, eight hours. Then, there is much higher frequency variability, often less than an hour, and we didn't test that in the experiments. And then, there is a much longer period of variability, that we see greater than the constant frequency, where, in some cases, hypoxia has lasted for weeks. That's one of the reasons. So, there's a range of variable exposure, and we started with testing the most common, and then the uncommon of itself. With a monoclonal antibody, we have also tested different variations, and found that it was shorter in the genre. So, the general question is, how specific to life stages, and how obvious the life stages, how obvious the responses are, then the problem becomes very complex, very quickly. There was a project that was designed by, led by Jim Battery, which took a model system at Abalone, that responses from fertilization, all the way to the juvenile responses. And so, that is an example of it, across different life stages and processes. Fertilization was attracted to pH, as expected, but then, in fact, the hypoxic condition, and obviously, so, it's very complex. I think that it is important to either focus on single species, that either play very important biological roles, that one is the urchins or sea stars, among other things, that we play a role for aquaculture or other purposes, that makes sense to learn everything about. And then, also, maybe think through experiments, or what parameters will then inform the landscape. For example, growth curves, or other types of information that can overlap with the data for the most studied species, and that's not particularly different from the last studies. So, we can look at everything, but maybe there's a component that is unusual in that set of results. So, if I remember correctly, from the way Crystal and Natalie were doing this, they would get kelp throughout some early part of the life history, and then they would expose them to your system. And given the results, under hypoxic situations, and constant kelp recruitment, you would see higher recruitment rates, because there'd be less grazing. Has there been any work on the kelp life history itself? Does hypoxia affect that aspect, so that if hypoxia positively affects recruitment, that would be an even greater magnification of the result. Is that? I can't think of a study anywhere in the kelp universe that has looked at hypoxia, because it's not what they would think of, assuming that oxygen is going to be a driving force in the life history of the kelp. Just you can see, throughout the whole system, you can see, I mean, it is public, it's on different locations, you have an invitation, you have a couple topics there. What happens to kelp at night? They can't photosynthesize. Do they expire? I mean, is hypoxia something that actually is going to be pretty important, even in post-hypoxia? I want to ask this question. So, what we saw, this is an anecdote, for two summers in a row, we saw very extreme and prolonged eclipses. And in contrast to other situations where we see what I call invertebrates, but not calves, the calf was rocked. It was rocked. You would touch it and it was blackened. We hypothesized that it was so extreme that the calf was bleached. Is that a possibility? Have you seen mortality of calves from hypoxia before? Well, so unfortunately for us, it's hard to disentangle hypoxia with the other environmental variables. So the answer is yes. At least the giant kelp is respiring constantly. And unlike other kelps, the giant kelp doesn't store energy. So the metabolism is a really critical component. So if you're increasing the internal metabolism within the kelp, you're probably going to see something like this withering. Especially if those hypoxic events of the southern range are coming with anything like fire term, then you'd see a compounded effect. But I think at that point when you're looking at correlative data, it's kind of hard. But we knew from being there, but we've never seen anything like it. Two years ago when we took our class, the people in the back there were talking large-scale. I was just curious, have they done it? Is it still working on it? Not yet, because the pilot that was done south of there, in La Bocana, has been running results. Different structures tested. Some of them worked very well for lobster and fishes. But few were lobster and fishes. Also, storms destroyed many of them. And so, I think, basically, the direction of our research plan is to look more carefully at the design. And, for example, Australians have used this. It's smaller, but one-piece blocks. What we did there was assemble on the water with many pieces. And it just wasn't strong enough. It looked very strong, but it's not. So it's different designs, and also more on what the optimal locations are. Which is a recurring theme. Also, with these cages full of cinder blocks. It's parts that were used in California. We deployed them in many locations. Same thing, but if they're not destroyed, they work very well. We have equipment a lot on the base. But if they're not in the right location, they get named by the storm. And so, the outlands, the same. Very high survivorship in one location. So, more knowledge of the local scalability is very crucial for all of us. From the exposure, to the bugs exposure, to predators, to octopus, and other species that pose very high mortality. And the juveniles. So, that, I think, is where there's a lot of potential. Maybe that was also involved. I don't know what they say, but also from the United States. Sometimes there's a need for a piece of information that can be obtained with not very structured projects. I think more on leveraging what we can provide. When you started your talk, you were talking about the NCS type work. Where there's global literature reviews and talking to experts. And at a global scale, there's often physical measurements that can be taken and tracked. But you don't see it as much for biological measurements. Like, kelp canopies from satellites or something. Do those sort of biological, at a global scale, data exist? Are there some that you wish existed, rather than doing a literature survey? Yes. It would be more advanced. We would start the citizen science project with Zooniverse. Zooniverse, which is a platform. And basically, the idea is that people all over the world analyze satellite imagery. And through time, we'll prove a concept of canopy-forming kelps. And then I'll cover from there also. This has to do with the detailed mapping of the biomass of kelp based on the canopy. So for most of the California-born land data exists, but not globally. And potentially, this project, citizen science, I haven't seen in the last year. Where is it? But that was exactly the idea. So can we produce a global map of where kelps are, in fact, rather than just from the sites from which there is more kelp in the world? Global data exists. It's all around us. Everything. I guess historically, we think about kelp deforestation in terms of keystone species. But your research challenges that idea. And most of your graphs start in 2008 and move forward. How might you take your research and think about historical kelp deforestation? If that makes sense. Keystone species? Sorry. I come from a literature department. Okay. How would you use what you've studied here to think about historical kelp deforestation events? So the approach that we have taken is basically to, again, go to the experts. So we have a project on historical change in Monterey Bay, where we've done this interview with experts. But basically, we have gone to scientists, to managers who have been using different fields. And we were able to track down people in their 90s now, And so one approach has been to piece together and translate this memory in a semi-quantitative assessment. And this is what Jennifer Seller, who's a postdoc at Hopkins, has been doing. And the results are really, really interesting in the case of kelp, because people's memories are all over. But then when you start having higher numbers, you see some trends emerging. And one really interesting trend that emerged is that you can see the abundance of kelp trapped in sea otters' basins. And so lots of macrocystis and then bull kelp before otters came back. And then the macrocystis recovery afterwards. And the documentation by many people, not just one, of bull kelp being present in Monterey Bay prior to otters in their 60s. And so now, that needs validation. And the validation can come from historical photographic archive, which officially archives them in those years. So trying to triangulate and cross-reference different sources. But a similar approach has been used in Baja Bayan. There are signs that probably only the fish is in different generations. You look at shipping. There's hundreds and thousands of fish. So survey and reproduction approach. And then the ties that exist for this area, I think, has a lot of potential. It helps. But in tactile studies, for example, it helps. But there are no—nobody believed in binary to the 70s. And region-wide. There is no region-wide for California, Portland, late 1990s. So it's all recent in terms of their quantitative data. All right. Well, I want to thank you again, Phil, for coming over this Saturday. I think we can track these types of questions and be able to address them. And I think the most exciting part was to see the culmination of a couple of those grad students have been looking at multi-species, multi-stressors. Because on the kelp side, we tend to do different experiments. And I think the cool part is seeing whether or not there's new interest in this interaction coming from this new set of questions. So it's great to see that infrastructure in place. And your first map, the Cromhansel paper, was showing the reds and blues around the planet. There's a lot of upwelling systems in the world where the kelps can be transported over and utilized in your system to study some of these questions. So it would be really great to start to see some work mapping out globally. So thanks for coming out. I appreciate it. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Please put plates up on the table when you're done, and we'll get them out. And thanks for coming out.