Opportunity Title:

Vulnerability of Arctic Species to Climate Change: Likelihood of Colonization of Warm Genotypes from Temperate to Arctic Ecoregions

Research Area:

Climate Change

EPA Lab/Center/Office:

National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL)

Location:

Newport, OR

Duration:

12 months

Brief Summary:

Arctic species will be at low risk to warming if warm genotypes from the south migrate northward. The intern will evaluate the likelihood of such migrations through data synthesis and/or modeling.

Opportunity Description:

EPA is developing an algorithm-based risk assessment to predict the impacts of climate change on coastal species at regional scales. The overall vulnerability to climate change as well as the specific risks to temperature increases, ocean acidification and sea level rise are predicted from a suite of life history traits integrated with geographic patterns of projected climatic changes and species’ distributions. A data mining/ecoinformatic approach is used, implemented in an online tool CBRAT (www.cbrat.org). The current public version of CBRAT synthesizes the distributional and life history information for all the crabs and rockfish from the Gulf of California through the Beaufort Sea (over 400 species).  The updated public version to be released in early 2017 will incorporate the climate risk assessments for these taxa, and then later in 2017 additional functionalities and taxa (e.g., bivalves) will be added.

One of the geographic patterns observed in the preliminary risk analysis is that crabs, as well as most other taxa, have a low risk to temperature increases in the Arctic ecoregions. This results from the fact that most Arctic species extend southward into temperate ecoregions with sea surface temperatures greater than those projected in the Arctic ecoregions by 2100. Thus, we conclude that the species possess thermal tolerances sufficient to maintain populations in the warmer Arctic temperatures projected in the future. However, an assumption of this biogeographic-based assessment is that warm genotypes from the warmer southern ecoregions will migrate northward into the Arctic. In some cases, the temperate populations exposed to temperatures equivalent to those projected in the Arctic are several thousand kilometers to the south. The focus of the intern would be to evaluate the assumption of northward migration of warm genotypes through data synthesis/analysis, potentially augmented with modeling. Specific questions that could be addressed include: 1) what is evidence for the presence of warm genotypes in southern ecoregions, and does this vary among taxa; 2) what is likelihood of warm genotypes establishing populations in Arctic ecoregions; 3) at what rate will populations of warm genotypes colonize Arctic ecoregions (e.g., will there be a substantial lag between temperature increases and colonization of warm genotypes); and 4) is it possible to develop a risk metric that incorporates the potential for northward migration?

Opportunities for Professional Development:

An objective would be for the student, in collaboration with EPA scientists, to produce a first-authored paper by the end of a 12-month internship. The data synthesis and analysis would expose the student to the use of data synthesis and ecoinformatics as an approach to addressing complex, multidisciplinary questions. We would prefer an intern for 12 months, but shorter periods would be acceptable.

Point of Contact or Mentor:

Henry Lee II (lee.henry@epa.gov)