In recent years off the United States Oregon coast severe hypoxic events have resulted in areas of mass vertebrate and invertebrate species mortality known as dead zones. Creation of dead zones and alteration of community species composition in response to inner shelf hypoxic conditions have been observed annually from 2002...
Wind-driven coastal upwelling brings subsurface water onto the central-Oregon shelf after the spring transition each year. This cold and salty source water is oxygen-poor, yet above the hypoxic threshold, dissolved oxygen < 1.4 ml l⁻¹. Once on the shelf, dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations of upwelled near-bottom waters are modified by...
Dislodged macroalgae and seagrasses, also known as marine wrack, frequently wash into coastal ecosystems from the ocean and are potentially important ecological resources for biological communities. These!nutrient and organic matter subsidies may be especially important on sandy beaches, where little in situ primary productivity exists for higher trophic levels. To...
Oceanic uptake of rising anthropogenic CO₂ emissions has caused the emergence of ocean acidification as a major threat to marine ecosystems worldwide. Along eastern boundary current systems, seawater is naturally acidified due to coastal upwelling of low pH seawater from depth. Compounded by ocean acidification, upwelling regions are expected to...
Human actions are pushing natural systems into states that have no historical precedent. In response, empirical and theoretical researchers are increasingly focused on developing ways to predict the responses of ecological systems to change. However, significant knowledge gaps remain, often leading to “ecological surprises” where observed impacts of global change...
Ocean acidification (OA) is the result of increasing concentrations of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, leading to a suite of alterations to specific parameters of ocean chemistry, which can negatively impact many marine organisms and ecosystems. Understanding how to measure and monitor the chemistry of OA will require specialized education...
Ecological communities are connected in space and time through the transfer of energy, materials, and organisms, together known as ecological subsidies. These ecological subsidies can have substantial effects on community structure, function, and services, especially when the connections are between communities with contrasting productivity. At the ocean-land interface, low productivity...
Survival of marine fishes during their early life history stage is tightly related to prey availability and predation pressure. Yet, our understanding of how individual larvae to entire assemblages are constrained by these factors is limited. We integrated biological sampling of larval fishes with fine-scale in situ imaging to relate...
Climate change and other anthropogenic impacts are threatening the existence of millions of species around the globe. On western continental boundaries, the large-scale secondary process of upwelling, which brings low pH, deoxygenated, high nutrient seawater to the surface, is compounded by climate change, that together could drive some species to...
Climate change presents multiple stressors that are impacting marine life. As carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase in the atmosphere, atmospheric and sea water temperatures increase. In addition, more carbon dioxide is absorbed into the oceans, reducing pH and aragonite saturation state, resulting in ocean acidification (OA). Tightly coupled with...