Sea life (pelagic and planktonic ecosystems) as an indicator of climate and global change
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| Abstract |
his chapter highlights few case-studies to indicate that there is substantial observational evidence that many pelagic ecosystems, both physically and biologically are responding to changes in regional climate caused predominately by the warming of SST, ocean current changes, and to a lesser extent by the modification of precipitation regimes and wind patterns. The biological manifestations of climatic variability have rapidly taken the form of biogeographical, phenological, biodiversity, physiological, species abundance changes, community structural shifts, and whole ecological regime shifts. Some of the most convincing evidence for the biological response to regional climate variability comes from the bottom of the marine pelagic food-web especially from phytoplankton and zooplankton communities. Many other responses associated with climate warming on higher trophic levels are also indirectly associated with changes in the plankton and imply bottom-up control of the marine pelagic environment. It is therefore assumed that one of the ways in which populations respond to climate is in part determined by changes in the food-web structure where the population is embedded, with synchrony between predator and prey (match–mismatch) playing an important role. Future biological monitoring of these ecosystems, through an integrated and sustained observational approach, will be essential in understanding the continuing impacts of climate and global change on the planetary system. This in turn may allow us through international collaboration to mitigate and adaptively manage some of their more detrimental impacts. |
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