UC Santa Barbara

One challenge of global change biology is understanding the fate of organisms under future pH change in variable coastal environments (Shaw et al., 2013). Coastal pH dynamics can vary at the global scale (Hofmann et al., 2011), as well as at finer regional scales (Frieder et al., 2012), and this mosaic of pH exposure will likely play a large role in mediating the fate of coastal organisms to near-future change.

Through this dissertation, I deploy oceanographic sensors to categorize these changes at a variety of scales, and pair these results with biological experiments designed to investigate the response of juvenile life stages to current and future extremes. I deployed and retrieved moorings, conducted time series data analysis, deployed caged outplant experiments, spawned and cultured sea urchin embryos, and conducted respirometry on macrozooplankton.

This dissertation consists of 4 chapters: 1) deploying sensors to investigate fine-scale spatiotemporal variation in a Southern California kelp forest, 2) conducting a transgenerational experiment to the biological performance of offspring when adults are conditioned inside of a kelp forest environment, 3) gathering a long-term time series of ocean pH in Antarctica by deploying oceanographic sensors under the fast ice, and 4) investigating the metabolic response of juvenile Antarctic pteropods to current and near-future extremes of temperature and pH.