Impacts of Climate Change on Seaweeds

Climate change is drastically altering the composition and abundance of seaweed-dominated ecosystems throughout our oceans. Ocean warming – both gradual temperature increases and intensifying marine heatwaves – ocean acidification and deoxygenation all can impact the physiology of seaweeds and the ecological roles that they play. Ocean warming can cause the long-term shift in ranges of seaweed species, usually in the form of range retractions at warm edges and range expansions at cool edges of the range. Marine heatwaves can elicit acute heat stress in seaweeds, drive subsequent mortality, and result in phases shifts from one ecosystem type to another. Ocean acidification causes the slow transformation of ecosystems from those dominated by coralline algal substrate to those characterised by a variety of turfing seaweeds or microalgae. Increasing intensity of ocean deoxygenation and frequency of acute localized events will likely exacerbate the effects of localized threats, but effects of deoxygenation remain poorly understood compared to other climate change-linked stressors. Additionally, increased sedimentation caused by land use changes and increased storm frequencies brought on by climate change (termed coastal darkening’) is also an important stressor of seaweed communities and can interact other stressors (e.g., temperature) or act on its own to alter the composition and distribution of seaweed-dominated ecosystems. To better predict and project how seaweed-dominated ecosystems will fare in the future, we require much more evidence regarding how the effects of climate change will manifest on seaweeds of all types across temperate, tropical, and polar ecosystems.
This research topic focuses on how the effects of climate change will manifest on all aspects of seaweed biology, and the flow-on effects to ecosystem dynamics. This research topic calls for papers on all seaweed ecosystem types from kelp forests to coral reefs, focusing on manuscripts that examine the effects of any aspect of climate change in the field or laboratory setting, or via modelling.