1. Challenges for sustained observing and forecasting systems in the Mediterranean SeaJoaquín Tintoré, Nadia Pinardi, Enrique Álvarez-Fanjul, Eva Aguiar, Diego Álvarez-Berastegui, Marco Bajo, Rosa Balbin, Roberto Bozzano, Bruno Buongiorno Nardelli, Vanessa Cardin, Vlado Malačič, 2019, review article Abstract: The Mediterranean community represented in this paper is the result of more than 30 years of EU and nationally funded coordination, which has led to key contributions in science concepts and operational initiatives. Together with the establishment of operational services, the community has coordinated with universities, research centers, research infrastructures and private companies to implement advanced multi-platform and integrated observing and forecasting systems that facilitate the advancement of operational services, scientific achievements and mission-oriented innovation. Thus, the community can respond to societal challenges and stakeholders needs, developing a variety of fit-for-purpose services such as the Copernicus Marine Service. The combination of state-of-the-art observations and forecasting provides new opportunities for downstream services in response to the needs of the heavily populated Mediterranean coastal areas and to climate change. The challenge over the next decade is to sustain ocean observations within the research community, to monitor the variability at small scales, e.g., the mesoscale/submesoscale, to resolve the sub-basin/seasonal and inter-annual variability in the circulation, and thus establish the decadal variability, understand and correct the model-associated biases and to enhance model-data integration and ensemble forecasting for uncertainty estimation. Better knowledge and understanding of the level of Mediterranean variability will enable a subsequent evaluation of the impacts and mitigation of the effect of human activities and climate change on the biodiversity and the ecosystem, which will support environmental assessments and decisions. Further challenges include extending the science-based added-value products into societal relevant downstream services and engaging with communities to build initiatives that will contribute to the 2030 Agenda and more specifically to SDG14 and the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development, by this contributing to bridge the science-policy gap. The Mediterranean observing and forecasting capacity was built on the basis of community best practices in monitoring and modeling, and can serve as a basis for the development of an integrated global ocean observing system.
Keywords: observing and forecasting systems, sustained observations, ocean variability, FAIR data, climate, operational services, science with and for society, SDG's
Published in DiRROS: 06.08.2024; Views: 45; Downloads: 55
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2. Interannual size changes of adult Aurelia sp.5 medusae stage in the Marine protected Area of Mljet Island South AdriaticTjaša Kogovšek, Juan Carlos Molinero, Davor Lučić, Ivona Onofri, Barbara Gangai, Marijana Miloslavić, Delphine Bonnet, Alenka Malej, 2012, original scientific article Abstract: Aurelia aurita s.l. is the most widespread scyphozoan jellyfish that recurrently appear “en mass” and forms large aggregations mainly in coastal waters, embayments and estuaries. Beside anthropogenic factors controlling jellyfish populations climate change may play an important role. The aim of this study was to assess whether climate-related factors in absence of other anthropogenically induced stressor influence medusae size. We investigated seasonal and interannual changes in the size of Aurelia in a “jelly lake” in the National Park of Mljet Island (Croatia) where minimal human impact on the environment makes the Veliko Jezero a natural mesocosm for understanding the impact of climate change on the Aurelia population. The observed changes suggest Aurelia medusa population response to changing environment, in particular to enhanced temperature, by reduced body sizes. Comparison of Aurelia population dynamics from different regions in the Mediterranean Sea revealed the unique feature of the Veliko Jezero population. Despite the similarity of the environmental windows of medusae occurrences in the Veliko Jezero and regions in the Mediterranean Sea, medusae in the Veliko Jezero are present all year round. It seems that the lake bathymetry enables medusae to vertically migrate to deeper and cooler water layer, avoiding the limiting temperatures developed in the upper layer during the summer. These conditions may prolong the Aurelia medusae life span and together with continuous strobilation support the stability of the Aurelia medusae population all year round.
Keywords: Mediterraneum, moon jellyfish, Adriatic Sea, South Adriatic Sea, marine lakes, Aurelia spp, climate-related factor, Mediterranean Sea, marine research, population dynamics
Published in DiRROS: 05.08.2024; Views: 74; Downloads: 39
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3. Assisted tree migration can preserve the European forest carbon sink under climate changeDebojyoti Chakraborty, Albert Ciceu, Dalibor Ballian, Marta Benito Garzón, Andreas Bolte, Gregor Božič, Rafael Buchacher, Jaroslav Čepl, Eva Cremer, Alexis Ducousso, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: Climate change threatens the role of European forests as a long-term carbon sink. Assisted migration aims to increase the resilience of forest tree populations to climate change, using species-specific climatic limits and local adaptations through transferring seed provenances. We modelled assisted migration scenarios for seven main European tree species and analysed the effects of species and seed provenance selection, accounting for environmental and genetic variations, on the annual above-ground carbon sink of regrowing juvenile forests. To increase forest resilience, coniferous trees need to be replaced by deciduous species over large parts of their distribution. If local seed provenances are used, this would result in a decrease of the current carbon sink (40 TgC yr−1) by 34–41% by 2061–2080. However, if seed provenances adapted to future climates are used, current sinks could be maintained or even increased to 48–60 TgC yr−1.
Keywords: forest resilience, forest, Europe, carbon sink, climate change, assisted migration, transferring seed provenances
Published in DiRROS: 25.07.2024; Views: 120; Downloads: 107
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4. Contrasting effects of altitude on species groups with different traits in a non-fragmented montane temperate forestMaarten De Groot, Al Vrezec, 2019, original scientific article Abstract: Temperature has strong effects on species composition and traits. These effects can differ within and between species groups. Thermoregulation and mobility are traits which can be strongly affected by altitudinal distribution. Our aim was to investigate the influence of altitude on the species richness, abundance and composition of species groups with different trophic, thermoregulatory and mobility traits. Carabids (Coleoptera; Carabidae), hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) and birds (Aves: Passeriformes) were counted in three altitudinal belts with a total elevation difference of 700 m (from 300 m to 1000 m a.s.l.) in the same habitat type (non-fragmented temperate montane mixed beech and fir forest). We found that endotherms and more mobile species (i.e. birds) had a smaller turnover than ectotherms (i.e. hoverflies) and less mobile species (i.e. carabids), from which we can predict that the former species will undergo a less extreme shift than the latter in global warming scenarios. Species turnover across the altitudinal gradient increased from birds to hoverflies to carabid beetles. The effect of altitude on phenology was different between the studied ectotherm species groups (carabids and hoverflies). Hoverflies experience a phenological delay of species richness and abundance at higher altitudes in spring, but not at the end of summer, which implies that hoverfly phenology is affected by a change in temperature, while carabid beetle abundance exhibited a delay in phenology in summer at higher altitudes. We suggest that species that are expected to be most affected by climate change, such as ectotherms and species with poor dispersal ability should be prioritised as the best indicators for monitoring and conservation management purposes.
Keywords: climate change, Carabidae, Syrphidae, Aves, altitudinal gradient, species assemblage
Published in DiRROS: 24.07.2024; Views: 96; Downloads: 63
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5. Experimental evidence of long-term oceanic circulation reversals without wind influence in the North Ionian SeaAngelo Rubino, Miroslav Gačić, Manuel Bensi, Vedrana Kovacevic, Vlado Malačič, Milena Menna, Maria Eletta Negretti, Joel Sommeria, Davide Zanchettin, Ricardo V. Barreto, Laura Ursella, Vanessa Cardin, Giuseppe Civitarese, Mirko Orlić, Boris Petelin, Giuseppe Siena, 2020, original scientific article Abstract: Under the emerging features of interannual-to-decadal ocean variability, the periodical reversals of the North Ionian Gyre (NIG), driven mostly by the mechanism named Adriatic-Ionian Bimodal Oscillating System (BiOS), are known as impacting on marine physics and biogeochemistry and potentially influencing short-term regional climate predictability in the Eastern Mediterranean. Whilst it has been suggested that local wind forcing cannot explain such variability, aspects of the alternative hypothesis indicating that NIG reversals mainly arises from an internal ocean feedback mechanism alone remain largely debated. Here we demonstrate, using the results of physical experiments, performed in the world’s largest rotating tank and numerical simulations, that the main observed feature of BiOS, i.e., the switch of polarity of the near-surface circulation in the NIG, can be induced by a mere injection of dense water on a sloping bottom. Hence, BiOS is a truly oceanic mode of variability and abrupt polarity changes in circulation can arise solely from extreme dense water formation events.
Keywords: physical oceanography, climate and Earth system modelling
Published in DiRROS: 19.07.2024; Views: 117; Downloads: 111
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6. Pelagic calcifiers face increased mortality and habitat loss with warming and ocean acidificationNina Bednaršek, Brendan Carter, Ryan M. McCabe, Richard Alan Feely, Evan M. Howard, Francisco P. Chavez, Meredith Elliott, Jennifer L. Fisher, Jaime Jahncke, Zach Siegrist, 2022, original scientific article Abstract: Global change is impacting the oceans in an unprecedented way, and multiple lines of evidence suggest that species distributions are changing in space and time. There is increasing evidence that multiple environmental stressors act together to constrain species habitat more than expected from warming alone. Here, we conducted a comprehensive study of how temperature and aragonite saturation state act together to limit Limacina helicina, globally distributed pteropods that are ecologically important pelagic calcifiers and an indicator species for ocean change. We co-validated three different approaches to evaluate the impact of ocean warming and acidification (OWA) on the survival and distribution of this species in the California Current Ecosystem. First, we used colocated physical, chemical, and biological data from three large-scale west coast cruises and regional time series; second, we conducted multifactorial experimental incubations to evaluate how OWA impacts pteropod survival; and third, we validated the relationships we found against global distributions of pteropods and carbonate chemistry. OWA experimental work revealed mortality increases under OWA, while regional habitat suitability indices and global distributions of L. helicina suggest that a multi-stressor framework is essential for understanding pteropod distributions. In California Current Ecosystem habitats, where pteropods are living close to their thermal maximum already, additional warming and acidification through unabated fossil fuel emissions (RCP 8.5) are expected to dramatically reduce habitat suitability.
Keywords: California current ecosystem, climate change, global data synthesis, habitat loss, habitat suitability modeling, multiple stressors, ocean acidification, pelagic calcifiers, pteropods, species distribution, warming
Published in DiRROS: 17.07.2024; Views: 104; Downloads: 154
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7. Holocene climate variability in Slovenia : a reviewMatej Lipar, Sonja Lojen, Mateja Breg Valjavec, Maja Andrič, Andrej Šmuc, Tom Levanič, Jure Tičar, Matija Zorn, Mateja Ferk, 2024, review article Keywords: palaeoclimate, climate proxy, glaciers, pollen, tree-rings, sediment, speleothems, historical data
Published in DiRROS: 21.06.2024; Views: 195; Downloads: 134
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8. Too hot to handle : effects of water temperature on the early life stages of Gongolaria barbata (Fucales)Ana Lokovšek, Valentina Pitacco, Annalisa Falace, Domen Trkov, Martina Orlando-Bonaca, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: Gongolaria barbata plays a crucial role as a habitat-forming Fucales species in the Mediterranean Sea, thriving in shallow, sheltered coastal regions, where it exhibits optimal growth in a temperature range of 10 to 25 °C. In the northern Adriatic Sea, a semi-enclosed part of the Mediterranean, there has been a remarkable increase in seawater temperatures in recent decades, often exceeding 28 °C in summer. These high temperatures pose a significant threat to the vulnerable early life stages of G. barbata. This study delves into the effects of four temperatures (15, 18, 24, and 28 °C) on the growth of G. barbata over its first 16 days, closely monitoring mortality, deformities, and overall survival. Our experiments reveal that higher temperatures can result in deformities and increased mortality of germlings. Notably, a temperature of 28 °C resulted in the death of all germlings within the first week, whereas those exposed to 24 °C survived until the second week, albeit with significant deformities prior to death. In contrast, germlings cultivated at 15 and 18 °C exhibited normal development with minimal deformities. These results highlight the susceptibility of the early life stages of G. barbata to temperature-induced stress and provide valuable insights into the potential consequences of rising seawater temperatures in the Mediterranean.
Keywords: sea temperature, early stages of growth, deformations, macroalgae, climate change, Mediterranean Sea
Published in DiRROS: 17.05.2024; Views: 290; Downloads: 347
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9. Lizard host abundances and climatic factors explain phylogenetic diversity and prevalence of blood parasites on an oceanic islandRodrigo Megía-Palma, Gemma Palomar, Javier Martínez, Bernardo Antunes, Katarzyna Dudek, Anamarija Žagar, Nina Guerra Serén, Miguel A. Carretero, Wiesław Babik, Santiago Merino, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: Host abundance might favour the maintenance of a high phylogenetic diversity of some parasites via rapid transmission rates. Blood parasites of insular lizards represent a good model to test this hypothesis because these parasites can be particularly prevalent in islands and host lizards highly abundant. We applied deep amplicon sequencing and analysed environmental predictors of blood parasite prevalence and phylogenetic diversity in the endemic lizard Gallotia galloti across 24 localities on Tenerife, an island in the Canary archipelago that has experienced increasing warming and drought in recent years. Parasite prevalence assessed by microscopy was over 94%, and a higher proportion of infected lizards was found in warmer and drier locations. A total of 33 different 18s rRNA parasite haplotypes were identified, and the phylogenetic analyses indicated that they belong to two genera of Adeleorina (Apicomplexa: Coccidia), with Karyolysus as the dominant genus. The most important predictor of between-locality variation in parasite phylogenetic diversity was the abundance of lizard hosts. We conclude that a combination of climatic and host demographic factors associated with an insular syndrome may be favouring a rapid transmission of blood parasites among lizards on Tenerife, which may favour the maintenance of a high phylogenetic diversity of parasites.
Keywords: Canary Islands, climate change, next-generation sequencing, phylogenetic analyses, zoology, ecology
Published in DiRROS: 16.05.2024; Views: 242; Downloads: 331
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