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| Role of tidal cycle in determining patterns of risk in intertidal ecosystems | |
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Species range boundaries are determined by a variety of factors of which climate is one of the most influential. As a result, climate change is expected to have a profound effect on organisms and ecosystems. However, the impacts of weather and climate are frequently modified by multiple non-climatic factors. Therefore the role of these non-climatic factors needs to be examined in order to understand and predict future change. Marine intertidal ecosystems are exposed to heat extremes during warm, sunny, midday low tides. Thus, the timing of low tide, a non-climatic factor, determines the potential contact intertidal invertebrates and algae have with heat extremes. We developed a method that quantifies the daily risk of heat extremes in the marine intertidal using solar elevations and spatially continuous tidal predictions. |
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| Figure 1. Map animation showing spatial and temporal variation in the proportion of risky days (risky days/total days) in June along the West Coast of North America. | |
| Reference: | |
| Mislan, K.A.S., D.S. Wethey, and B. Helmuth. 2009. When to worry about the weather: Role of tidal cycle in determining patterns of risk in intertidal systems. Global Change Biology. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.01936.x | |
| Resources: | |
| Oregon State University Tidal Inversion Software (Gary D. Egbert and Lana Erofeeva) | |
| NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons System (Jon Giorgini) | |
| Generic Mapping Tool (Paul Wessel and Walter H. F. Smith) | |
| Funding: | |
| NASA Earth Systems Science Fellowship | |
| NASA Grants NNG04GE43G, NNX07AF20G | |
| NOAA Ecofore grant NA04NOS4780264 | |
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