The waters off many of the world’s coasts are under enormous pressure. Climate change is altering entire ecosystems in coastal waters and shelf seas, and added to this are further stress factors like overfertilisation and overfishing. All these negative influences act together and often mutually reinforce each other. The functionality and performance of these habitats that are so vital for humans could suffer as a result, warns a team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. To better understand these critical developments and potentially counteract them, they argue, we need more complex and more flexible computer models than those currently available.
“So far, using computer models has only allowed us to partially simulate these processes,” says Sabine Horn. For example, these models can readily simulate how the plankton in a given region react to changing food availability. But as a rule, the computer doesn’t necessarily consider what this will mean for the fish, or how changes in their populations affect the plankton. Nor is it able, in addition to the available food, to take into account all the other environmental factors, from water temperature to pH to salinity. As a result, virtual representations of the coastal seas and their future remain fairly one-dimensional.
Accordingly, the AWI experts recommend coupling dynamic physical and biological models. “It’s going to be a considerable challenge,” Horn emphasises, and one she feels can only be overcome by gathering the expertise from various research disciplines, from ecology to mathematics. “But we’re convinced the hard work will pay off.”
After all, such a model could track how a diverse range of environmental factors develop as climate change progresses, and what the consequences are for various groups of marine organisms – and throughout the complex food webs that interconnect them all. “We could even project what effects specific management measures like establishing new protected areas or reducing nutrient input would have,” says Horn. Various scenarios for the future of coastal waters could then be visualised on the computer monitor – using a script that was based on hard scientific facts, and showed what options are available to society.
Original publication
Sabine Horn, Cédric L. Meunier, Vera Fofonova, Karen H. Wiltshire, Subrata Sarker, Bernadette Pogoda, Harald Asmus: Toward Improved Model Capacities for Assessment of Climate Impacts on Coastal Bentho-Pelagic Food Webs and Ecosystem Services. Frontiers in Marine Science (2021), DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2021.567266
