“Our energy choices have ramifications for many other types of pollutants,” said Elsie Sunderland, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard University and Nereus Program collaborator. “Hydroelectric: when we flood our reservoirs we actually cause a dramatic pulse in methylmercury production, which is neurotoxic, and we also cause a pulse in CO2 and methane.”
Dr. Elsie Sunderland of Harvard will present this third seminar in a series offered jointly by the Nereus Program and Green College at UBC. The seminar will take place at…
“Spatial differentiation of marine eutrophication damage indicators based on species density” was recently published in Ecological Indicators, co-authored by Nereus Alumnus Miranda Jones (UNEP-WCMC) and Nereus Director of Science William Cheung. The paper looks at developing an index to assess eutrophication effects on marine ecosystems and introducing an ecosystem response indicator to nitrogen loadings to coastal waters.
Nereus Fellow at Princeton Colleen Petrik will be giving a plenary talk entitled “The Response of Fisheries Production to Natural and Anthropogenic Forcing: Past, Present and Future” at the PICES Annual Meeting in San Diego. The talk presents a mechanistic model to represent immature and mature stages of forage fishes, large pelagic fishes, and large demersal fishes, as well as preliminary of fish biomass under (1) pristine non-anthropogenic historical forcing (no anthropogenic CO2, no fishing), (2) historical climate without fishing, (3) historical climate with fishing, (4) and projected business-as-usual climate and fishing.
Nereus Director of Science William Cheung gave a keynote entitled “Applying macroecology to project future marine ecosystems under climate change” at the British Ecological Society’s Aquatic Macroecology Meeting in London on September 30, 2016.
This chapter explores recent and future impacts of rapid temperature changes in the North Sea, identified as a ‘hot spot’ of climate change, with respect to biological, operational, and economic concerns in fisheries. The region is one of the most important fishing grounds in the world.
Nereus Director of Science William Cheung will be giving a keynote entitled “Applying macroecology to project future marine ecosystems under climate change” at the Aquatic Macroecology Meeting of the British Ecological Society.
In spring, as the plant buds push up through the ground and the days get warmer and longer, the baby salmon fry hatch out of their eggs and start swimming and feeding. At this time, their food – phytoplankton – should also bloom. But due to climate change-induced warming, the fry of many fishes, such as salmon, are coming out earlier or later, as are the phytoplankton blooms, which can cause a mismatch between when the food is available and when the fry need it.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released their Methodological Assessment of Scenarios & Models of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, for which Nereus Director of Science William Cheung was a coordinating lead author, as well as a contributing author for Chapter 5 “Modelling consequences of change in biodiversity for nature’s benefits to people” (200-243).
Salps, a type of gelatinous zooplankton, are often confused with jellyfish and while jellyfish research has increased drastically, salps have been ignored. The authors write that there “has been no comprehensive study on the biology or ecological impact of salps in almost 20 years”. This paper looks at four misconceptions about salps, including that salps are jellyfish, salps are rare, salps are trophic dead ends, and salps have a minor role in biogeochemical cycles.
