Doctoral student Shirah Strock will travel from the Virginia Coast Reserve (VCR) LTER to the Santa Barbara Coastal (SBC) LTER. She will receive hands-on training in ViQi, an AI platform used to quantify sessile organism (algae, invertebrate) recruitment from long-term benthic imagery.
The LTER Network Office is excited to announce that three Scientific Peers Advancing Research Collaborations (SPARC) proposals were funded this year. The three groups will meet in person at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis for one week, starting in the fall.
As part of a multi-site Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program, two science teachers, Emily Chittick and Traci Kennedy, from Milwaukee Public Schools, conducted an experiment to see whether warmer water temperatures affected the ability of sea urchins to flip themselves over after being turned upside down. They wrote up this part of their summer… Read more »
Marine LTER sites come together to synthesize how consumer-mediated nutrient dynamics are changing throughout time and in response to disturbances.
How does an unaffiliated team wind up presenting a poster on decades of LTER data? It begins, as it so often does, with a need for data.
It has been an incredibly opportunity to explore the Channel Islands and beyond and to meet our coastline’s unique marine life.
Transit between sites is always an opportunity to see amazing wildlife. Here are my most memorable wildlife encounters at the SBC LTER.
Whenever I jump into the blue-green surface waters and descend towards the bottom, I am reminded of the powerful, yet serene beauty of kelp forests.
Purple sea urchin embryos whose mothers were exposed to heatwaves have greater tolerance to high temperatures, suggesting a pathway to resilience for this keystone species in kelp forests.
A six-year pilot study on Santa Monica Beach shows how seeding of native flora can restore habitats for threatened species and protect against climate change-driven sea level rise.
RET projects at the Santa Barbara Coastal LTER site will focus on marine heatwaves, a research focus that connects to the impact of climate change on important ecosystems. Marine heatwaves (MHWs) – defined as prolonged periods of unusually high seawater temperatures – have emerged as disruptive forces in the kelp forest, threatening marine biodiversity and… Read more »
Researchers at the SBC LTER show that lobster spillover from MPAs caused a 400% increase in lobster abundance outside of protected areas.
