A marine protected area network does not confer community structure resilience to a marine heatwave across coastal ecosystems.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have gained attention as a conservation tool for enhancing ecosystem resilience to climate change. However, empirical evidence explicitly linking MPAs to enhanced ecological resilience is limited and mixed. To better understand whether MPAs can buffer climate impacts, we tested the resistance and recovery of marine communities to the 2014-2016 Northeast Pacific heatwave in the largest scientifically designed MPA network in the world off the coast of California, United States. The network consists of 124 MPAs (48 no-take state marine reserves, and 76 partial-take or special regulation conservation areas) implemented at different times, with full implementation completed in 2012. We compared fish, benthic invertebrate, and macroalgal community structure inside and outside of 13 no-take MPAs across rocky intertidal, kelp forest, shallow reef, and deep reef nearshore habitats in California's Central Coast region from 2007 to 2020. We also explored whether MPA features, including age, size, depth, proportion rock, historic fishing pressure, habitat diversity and richness, connectivity, and fish biomass response ratios (proxy for ecological performance), conferred climate resilience for kelp forest and rocky intertidal habitats spanning 28 MPAs across the full network. Ecological communities dramatically shifted due to the marine heatwave across all four nearshore habitats, and MPAs did not facilitate habitat-wide resistance or recovery. Only in protected rocky intertidal habitats did community structure significantly resist marine heatwave impacts. Community shifts were associated with a pronounced decline in the relative proportion of cold water species and an increase in warm water species. MPA features did not explain resistance or recovery to the marine heatwave. Collectively, our findings suggest that MPAs have limited ability to mitigate the impacts of marine heatwaves on community structure. Given that mechanisms of resilience to climate perturbations are complex, there is a clear need to expand assessments of ecosystem-wide consequences resulting from acute climate-driven perturbations, and the potential role of regulatory protection in mitigating community structure changes.

Equivocal associations between small-scale shoreline restoration and subtidal fishes in an urban estuary.

Restoration of degraded coastal and estuarine habitats owing to human activities is a major global concern. In Puget Sound, Washington, U.S.A., removal of hard armor from beaches and intertidal zones has become a priority for state and local agencies. However, the effectiveness of these shoreline restoration programs for subtidal habitats and fish is unknown. We surveyed six restoration sites in Puget Sound over 2 years to evaluate associations between shoreline restoration and subtidal fish abundance. We measured the abundance of juvenile salmonids and forage fishes along armored, restored, and reference shorelines. Bayesian generalized linear models showed limited support for associations between shoreline restoration and these fishes in the 3-7 years since armor removal. Pacific herring were more abundant at reference shorelines; the shoreline effect for surf smelt varied by survey site. Shoreline restoration was not an important predictor of salmonid abundance; the best models for Chinook and chum salmon included predictors for survey site and eelgrass, respectively. The retention of survey site in several species' top models reveals the influence of the broader landscape context. We also found seasonal variation in abundance for chum salmon and surf smelt. Our results suggest that juvenile forage fish and salmonids in estuaries likely have unique responses to shoreline features, and that the positive effects of armor removal either do not extend into subtidal areas or are not detectable at local scales. To be most effective, coastal restoration programs should consider broader landscape patterns as well as species-specific habitat needs when prioritizing investments.

Lessons from bright-spots for advancing knowledge exchange at the interface of marine science and policy.

Evidence-informed decision-making is in increasing demand given growing pressures on marine environments. A way to facilitate this is by knowledge exchange among marine scientists and decision-makers. While many barriers are reported in the literature, there are also examples whereby research has successfully informed marine decision-making (i.e., 'bright-spots'). Here, we identify and analyze 25 bright-spots from a wide range of marine fields, contexts, and locations to provide insights into how to improve knowledge exchange at the interface of marine science and policy. Through qualitative surveys we investigate what initiated the bright-spots, their goals, and approaches to knowledge exchange. We also seek to identify what outcomes/impacts have been achieved, the enablers of success, and what lessons can be learnt to guide future knowledge exchange efforts. Results show that a diversity of approaches were used for knowledge exchange, from consultative engagement to genuine knowledge co-production. We show that diverse successes at the interface of marine science and policy are achievable and include impacts on policy, people, and governance. Such successes were enabled by factors related to the actors, processes, support, context, and timing. For example, the importance of involving diverse actors and managing positive relationships is a key lesson for success. However, enabling routine success will require: 1) transforming the ways in which we train scientists to include a greater focus on interpersonal skills, 2) institutionalizing and supporting knowledge exchange activities in organizational agendas, 3) conceptualizing and implementing broader research impact metrics, and 4) transforming funding mechanisms to focus on need-based interventions, impact planning, and an acknowledgement of the required time and effort that underpin knowledge exchange activities.

Population diversity in Pacific herring of the Puget Sound, USA.

Demographic, functional, or habitat diversity can confer stability on populations via portfolio effects (PEs) that integrate across multiple ecological responses and buffer against environmental impacts. The prevalence of these PEs in aquatic organisms is as yet unknown, and can be difficult to quantify; however, understanding mechanisms that stabilize populations in the face of environmental change is a key concern in ecology. Here, we examine PEs in Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) in Puget Sound (USA) using a 40-year time series of biomass data for 19 distinct spawning population units collected using two survey types. Multivariate auto-regressive state-space models show independent dynamics among spawning subpopulations, suggesting that variation in herring production is partially driven by local effects at spawning grounds or during the earliest life history stages. This independence at the subpopulation level confers a stabilizing effect on the overall Puget Sound spawning stock, with herring being as much as three times more stable in the face of environmental perturbation than a single population unit of the same size. Herring populations within Puget Sound are highly asynchronous but share a common negative growth rate and may be influenced by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The biocomplexity in the herring stock shown here demonstrates that preserving spatial and demographic diversity can increase the stability of this herring population and its availability as a resource for consumers.

Habitat structure determines resource use by zooplankton in temperate lakes.

While the importance of terrestrial linkages to aquatic ecosystems is well appreciated, the degree of terrestrial support of aquatic consumers remains debated. Estimates of terrestrial contributions to lake zooplankton have omitted a key food source, phytoplankton produced below the mixed layer. We used carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data from 25 Pacific Northwest lakes to assess the relative importance of particulate organic matter (POM) from the mixed layer, below the mixed layer and terrestrial detritus to zooplankton. Zooplankton and deep POM were depleted in ¹³C relative to mixed layer POM in lakes that can support deep primary production. A Bayesian stable isotope mixing model estimated that terrestrial detritus contributed <5% to zooplankton production, and confirms the role of lake optical and thermal properties; deep POM accounted for up to 80% of zooplankton production in the clearest lakes. These results suggest terrestrial support of lake zooplankton production is trivial.

Management implications of long transients in ecological systems.

The underlying biological processes that govern many ecological systems can create very long periods of transient dynamics. It is often difficult or impossible to distinguish this transient behaviour from similar dynamics that would persist indefinitely. In some cases, a shift from the transient to the long-term, stable dynamics may occur in the absence of any exogenous forces. Recognizing the possibility that the state of an ecosystem may be less stable than it appears is crucial to the long-term success of management strategies in systems with long transient periods. Here we demonstrate the importance of considering the potential of transient system behaviour for management actions across a range of ecosystem organizational scales and natural system types. Developing mechanistic models that capture essential system dynamics will be crucial for promoting system resilience and avoiding system collapses.

Effects of stochasticity on the length and behaviour of ecological transients.

There is a growing recognition that ecological systems can spend extended periods of time far away from an asymptotic state, and that ecological understanding will therefore require a deeper appreciation for how long ecological transients arise. Recent work has defined classes of deterministic mechanisms that can lead to long transients. Given the ubiquity of stochasticity in ecological systems, a similar systematic treatment of transients that includes the influence of stochasticity is important. Stochasticity can of course promote the appearance of transient dynamics by preventing systems from settling permanently near their asymptotic state, but stochasticity also interacts with deterministic features to create qualitatively new dynamics. As such, stochasticity may shorten, extend or fundamentally change a system's transient dynamics. Here, we describe a general framework that is developing for understanding the range of possible outcomes when random processes impact the dynamics of ecological systems over realistic time scales. We emphasize that we can understand the ways in which stochasticity can either extend or reduce the lifetime of transients by studying the interactions between the stochastic and deterministic processes present, and we summarize both the current state of knowledge and avenues for future advances.

Degradation of littoral habitats by residential development: woody debris in lakes of the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, United States.

One of the least understood aspects of aquatic ecology is the role of riparian zones of lakes, and how these habitats and their functions are impacted by human development of lakeshores. We investigated the effects of residential lakeshore development on littoral coarse woody debris (CWD) distribution and on riparian forest characteristics by comparing 18 lakes in the U.S. Pacific Northwest with 16 previously surveyed lakes in the U.S. Upper Midwest. Residential development had a strong negative effect on CWD and riparian forest characteristics at both local and whole-lake scales. There was a strong positive correlation between riparian forest density and littoral CWD abundance in both regions. We found regional variation in CWD and riparian forest characteristics, mostly owing to differences in native forests. Our results suggest the role of local processes in determining CWD distribution and point to potential regional differences in littoral habitat structure associated with forest composition and lakeshore development that may have consequences for littoral-pelagic coupling in lakes.

Shifting regimes and changing interactions in the Lake Washington, U.S.A., plankton community from 1962-1994.

Understanding how changing climate, nutrient regimes, and invasive species shift food web structure is critically important in ecology. Most analytical approaches, however, assume static species interactions and environmental effects across time. Therefore, we applied multivariate autoregressive (MAR) models in a moving window context to test for shifting plankton community interactions and effects of environmental variables on plankton abundance in Lake Washington, U.S.A. from 1962-1994, following reduced nutrient loading in the 1960s and the rise of Daphnia in the 1970s. The moving-window MAR (mwMAR) approach showed shifts in the strengths of interactions between Daphnia, a dominant grazer, and other plankton taxa between a high nutrient, Oscillatoria-dominated regime and a low nutrient, Daphnia-dominated regime. The approach also highlighted the inhibiting influence of the cyanobacterium Oscillatoria on other plankton taxa in the community. Overall community stability was lowest during the period of elevated nutrient loading and Oscillatoria dominance. Despite recent warming of the lake, we found no evidence that anomalous temperatures impacted plankton abundance. Our results suggest mwMAR modeling is a useful approach that can be applied across diverse ecosystems, when questions involve shifting relationships within food webs, and among species and abiotic drivers.