A marine protected area network does not confer community structure resilience to a marine heatwave across coastal ecosystems |
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| Authors: | Joshua G Smith Christopher M Free Cori Lopazanski Julien Brun Clarissa R Anderson Mark H Carr Joachim Claudet Jenifer E Dugan Jacob G Eurich Tessa B Francis Scott L Hamilton David Mouillot Peter T Raimondi Richard M Starr Shelby L Ziegler Kerry J Nickols Jennifer E Caselle |
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| Institution: | 1. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA;2. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA;3. Scripps Institution of Oceanography/Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA;4. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, USA;5. National Center for Scientific Research, PSL Université Paris, CRIOBE, CNRS-EPHE-UPVD, Paris, France;6. Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, USA;7. Puget Sound Institute, University of Washington, Tacoma, Washington, USA;8. Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, San Jose State University, Moss Landing, California, USA;9. MARBEC, University of Montpellier, CNRS, IFREMER, IRD, Montpellier, France;10. Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA;11. Department of Biology, California State University Northridge, Northridge, California, USA |
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| Abstract: | 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. |
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| Keywords: | California climate change community composition community structure marine heatwaves marine protected area networks resilience |
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