Resistenza e resilienza della biodiversità costiera agli effetti sinergici di cambiamenti ambientali su scala locale e globale (BIORES) Progetto PRIN

The intensification of human activities along coastlines in combination with large-scale climate events are causing major changes to marine and terrestrial biodiversity. To develop adequate policies that guarantee the sustainable use of coastal resources, it is necessary to determine how ecological functions and services can be maintained in the face of increasing environmental uncertainty. The traditional approach to examine the effects of anthropogenic disturbances on biodiversity is to focus on specific drivers of change - e.g. point-source pollution. This approach is unlikely to capture the full range of environmental pressures that impinge on coastal organisms. An alternative strategy to cope with this complexity is to focus on the fundamental difference between large-scale and local processes in terms of the underlying patterns of variability. Whilst large-scale processes are characterised by large variability at low frequencies, localized processes that change abruptly in space or time display large variability at high frequencies. Thus, the response of biodiversity to the simultaneous influence of local and global environmental changes can be assessed by altering the patterns of variability of environmental drivers of change. In this project we will examine the synergistic effects of global vs. local disturbances on the ability of two key coastal systems - subtidal rocky reefs and coastal dunes - to resist to and to recover from perturbations. Using a combination of correlative and experimental approaches we will establish quantitative relationships between the resistance/resilience of these ecosystems and the degree of variability of environmental driving forces. Marine and terrestrial assemblages will be exposed to series of spatially autocorrelated and spatially independent disturbances to reflect large-scale (low frequency) disturbances and abrupt (high frequency) environmental changes, respectively. In doing so, we expect to identify general principles that govern the response of assemblages to increasing environmental fluctuations, independently of the identity of the environmental drivers of change. This project is expected to originate the necessary scientific understanding to anticipate the consequences of environmental variation on biodiversity, to provide managers with better tools to halt species extinctions and to guarantee long-term ecosystem functioning in the face of increasing climate variability.