Scaling up: Predicting the Impacts of Climate Change on Seagrass Ecosystems
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SPECIAL ISSUE: SEAGRASSES TRIBUTE TO SUSAN WILLIAMS
Scaling up: Predicting the Impacts of Climate Change on Seagrass Ecosystems Richard C. Zimmerman 1 Received: 24 April 2020 / Revised: 27 August 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 # Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation 2020
Abstract Since Susan Williams and I started our scientific careers in the mid-1970s, seagrass science has been transformed from a largely descriptive field to an increasingly quantitative and predictive endeavor that requires a mechanistic understanding of environmental influence on metabolic networks that control energy assimilation, growth, and reproduction. Although the potential impacts of environment on gene products are myriad, important phenotypic responses are often regulated by a few key points in metabolic networks where externally supplied resources or physiological substrates limit reaction kinetics. Environmental resources commonly limiting seagrass productivity, survival, and growth include light, temperature, and CO2 availability that control carbon assimilation and sucrose formation, and regulate stress responses to environmental change. Here I present a systems approach to quantify the responses of seagrasses to shifts in environmental factors that control fundamental physiological processes and whole plant performance in the context of a changing climate. This review shows that our ability to understand the past and predict the future trajectory of seagrass-based ecosystems can benefit from a mechanistic understanding of the responses of these remarkable plants to the simultaneous impacts of ocean acidification, climate warming, and eutrophication that are altering ecosystem function across the globe. Keywords Ocean acidification . Ocean warming . Carbon dioxide . Scaling up . Prediction . Metabolic theory . Energy balance . Energy flow
Homage to Susan Susan Williams was driven by her joy in exploring the natural world, her concern for environmental integrity, and her strong motivation to develop a mechanistic understanding of marine ecology. Her particular fondness for marine plants, especially seagrasses, led her to explore the physiology of these remarkable organisms and their function within subtidal ecosystems. Susan’s work on nutrient interactions and epiphytes (Hughes et al. 2004; Williams and Ruckelshaus 1993), seagrass population genetics (Williams and Davis 1996; Williams and Orth 1998), human exploitation of marine ecosystems (Coleman and Williams 2002), and biological invasions (Lodge et al. 2006; Williams and Smith 2007) helped formulate some of Communicated by Kenneth L. Heck * Richard C. Zimmerman [email protected] 1
Department of Ocean, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
the most highly influential papers published on the existential crisis facing seagrass ecosystems today (Orth et al. 2006; Waycott et al. 2009). At the heart of Susan’s science, however, was a desire to understand the past and predict the future, beginning with her first investigations into seagrass
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