To find information about kelp forests, go to Global Environment Watch. Search f
ID: 637479 • Letter: T
Question
To find information about kelp forests, go to Global Environment Watch. Search for kelp forests, and use the results to find sources of information about how a warmer ocean, as a result of climate change, might affect California’s coastal kelp beds on which the southern sea otters depend (Core Case Study). Write a report on what you found. Try to include information on current effects of warmer water on the kelp beds as well as projections about future effects. Also, summarize any information you might find on possible ways to prevent harm to these kelp beds.
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Explanation / Answer
Today More than 95% of Eastern Tasmania kelp forest- luxuriant Marine environment that provide food and shelter for species at all level of food web are gone. With the water still warming rapidly and the long spine urchin spreading Southward in the favourable condition, researchers see little hope of saving the vanishing ecosystem.
'' our giant kelp forest are now a tiny fraction of their former Glory'' says Craig Johnson, a researcher at the University of Tasmania institute for Marine and antartic studies. This ecosystem used to be a major iconic feature of eastern Tasmania and it no longer is.
The Tasmanian Saga is just one of many examples of how climate change and other environmental shift car driving worldwide losses of giant kelp , a brown algae whose strands can grow to 100 feet. In Western Australia increases in Ocean temperature, accentuated by an extreme spike in 2011, have killed vast beds of an important native kelp, Ecklonia radiate. In southern Norway Ocean temperature have exceeded the threshold for sugar kelp- saccharine latissima- which has died in masse since the late 1990s and largely been replaced by thick mats of turk algae, which stifles kelp recovery. In western Europe the warming Atlantic Ocean poses a serious threat to coastal Beds of laminaria digitata kelp and Researchershave predicted '' extirpation of the species as early as the first half of the 21st century'' in parts of France , Denmark and Southern England.
The water must be clear so that sunlight can reach the ocean floor where the kelp life begins. If the water is too warm the kelp does not thrive as well. Its most successful growth is in Geographic areas of upwelling and where the waters are always high in nutrients and always cold. For kelp to survive it must be anchored to strong substrate otherwise it will be yanked lose during storms.