Understanding the spatio-temporal seabird population responses to climate change.

• Main Authors: 3rd World Seabird Conference 2021, jenouvrier, stephanie
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Underline Science Inc. 2021
• Subjects: Climate Change; Ecosystem; Ecology; FOS Biological sciences; Animal Science; Genomics; Lynch; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48448/jjb1-p433; https://underline.io/lecture/34897-understanding-the-spatio-temporal-seabird-population-responses-to-climate-change.

Abstract: How will seabirds populations respond to climate variability and change? Can the dependence of seabirds populations on environmental conditions be quantified to enable future projections? Comparing seabird population dynamics and their response to environmental conditions across several locations provides a powerful means to assess the environmental characteristics defining the habitat suitability and the mechanisms driving year-to-year population fluctuations. First, we will introduce a conceptual model to decompose annual population growth rate at each site into two distinct components: the mean growth rate at the site and annual deviations from that mean. The functional dependence of the long-term population growth rate on mean climate state describes the habitat suitability curve, i.e. the environmental conditions under which populations can maintain positive mean growth rates and hence viable habitat conditions. Importantly, it enables understanding contrasting trends and responses to environmental variability of seabirds across species range. In addition, interannual variations in population growth rates at each site are likely dependent on variations in climate. This functional dependence may differ at each site, and conceptually depends on the habitat suitability curve. Second, we will applied this approach to Adélie penguin spatio-temporal responses to sea ice. This framework can be applied to any seabirds species for which time series of population abundance are available at several sites, providing an unprecedented opportunity to advance our fundamental understanding of seabird responses to climate change. Authors: David Iles¹, Heather Lynch², Rubao Ji¹, Christophe Barbraud³, Karine Delord³, Marika Holland⁴, Matthew Long⁴ ¹WHOI, ²Stony Brook University, ³CEBC/CNRS, ⁴NCAR