Climate-Induced Species Range Projections and the Consequences for Ecosystem Functioning in Canada’s Maritime Region Marine Conservation Network

Abstract

Ensuring the conservation and sustainability of marine ecosystems and the continued provision of ecosystem services are key goals of Canada’s framework for its protected seascape sites. With rapid climate change however, the protected seascape sites may become less effective at fulfilling these goals, especially since no consistent and coherent approach exists for adapting marine protected area networks to respond to ongoing and accelerating changes in Canadian marine ecosystems. In this thesis, I project and evaluate the consequences of climate-change induced shifts in marine species compositions for Canada’s east coast and for its proposed Scotian Shelf-Bay of Fundy Bioregion marine protected area network. In addition to assessing the effects of changing species distributions on the protected seascape, I develop a novel approach to project the ecological disruption that may be caused by these shifts. Ultimately, future scenarios with higher carbon emissions had larger shifts in species compositions and, subsequently, higher projected ecological disruption than lower emission scenarios. However, the network sites with the largest shifts in species composition did not suffer the highest ecological disruption, indicating the importance of assessing both species and functional change for a fuller understanding of climate change impacts. To ensure representation across the range of changes projected, I developed a “portfolio” of protected seascape sites that I recommend be prioritized for building resiliency and robustness to climate change, while also identifying the sites projected to have the highest ecological disruption and thus, most in need of protection from additional anthropogenic stressors. My results can be used to inform adaptive climate management for this region, and also provide a template for how such strategies can be conceived in terms of their integration into marine protected area design, management, and operation in other parts of the world.