Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.
NOAA, NMFS, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Monterey, CA, USA.
Glob Chang Biol. 2019 Dec;25(12):4208-4221. doi: 10.1111/gcb.14828. Epub 2019 Sep 27.
Climate change is causing range shifts in many marine species, with implications for biodiversity and fisheries. Previous research has mainly focused on how species' ranges will respond to changing ocean temperatures, without accounting for other environmental covariates that could affect future distribution patterns. Here, we integrate habitat suitability modeling approaches, a high-resolution global climate model projection, and detailed fishery-independent and -dependent faunal datasets from one of the most extensively monitored marine ecosystems-the U.S. Northeast Shelf. We project the responses of 125 species in this region to climate-driven changes in multiple oceanographic factors (e.g., ocean temperature, salinity, sea surface height) and seabed characteristics (i.e., rugosity and depth). Comparing model outputs based on ocean temperature and seabed characteristics to those that also incorporated salinity and sea surface height (proxies for primary productivity and ocean circulation features), we explored how an emphasis on ocean temperature in projecting species' range shifts can impact assessments of species' climate vulnerability. We found that multifactor habitat suitability models performed better in explaining and predicting species historical distribution patterns than temperature-based models. We also found that multifactor models provided more concerning assessments of species' future distribution patterns than temperature-based models, projecting that species' ranges will largely shift northward and become more contracted and fragmented over time. Our results suggest that using ocean temperature as a primary determinant of range shifts can significantly alter projections, masking species' climate vulnerability, and potentially forestalling proactive management.
气候变化正在导致许多海洋物种的分布范围发生变化，这对生物多样性和渔业都有影响。以前的研究主要集中在物种的分布范围将如何应对海洋温度的变化，而没有考虑到其他可能影响未来分布模式的环境协变量。在这里，我们整合了栖息地适宜性建模方法、高分辨率的全球气候模型预测以及来自美国东北大陆架这个受到最广泛监测的海洋生态系统之一的详细渔业独立和依赖的动物群数据集。我们预测了该地区 125 个物种对海洋温度等多个海洋因素（如海洋温度、盐度、海平面高度）和海底特征（即粗糙度和深度）变化的响应。我们将基于海洋温度和海底特征的模型输出与那些还包含盐度和海平面高度（初级生产力和海洋环流特征的代理）的模型输出进行比较，探讨了在预测物种分布范围变化时强调海洋温度如何影响对物种气候脆弱性的评估。我们发现，多因素栖息地适宜性模型在解释和预测物种的历史分布模式方面表现优于基于温度的模型。我们还发现，多因素模型对物种未来分布模式的评估比基于温度的模型更令人担忧，预测物种的范围将主要向北迁移，并且随着时间的推移变得更加收缩和碎片化。我们的研究结果表明，将海洋温度作为物种分布范围变化的主要决定因素可以显著改变预测结果，掩盖物种的气候脆弱性，并可能阻碍主动管理。
