Resistance of rocky intertidal communities to oceanic climate fluctuations

A powerful way to predict how ecological communities will respond to future climate change is to test how they have responded to the climate of the past. We used climate oscillations including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Pacific Gyre Oscillation, and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and variation in upwelling, air temperature, and sea temperatures to test the sensitivity of nearshore rocky intertidal communities to climate variability. Prior research shows that multiple ecological processes of key taxa (growth, recruitment, and physiology) were sensitive to environmental variation during this time frame. We also investigated the effect of the concurrent sea star wasting disease outbreak in 2013–2014. We surveyed nearly 150 taxa from 11 rocky intertidal sites in Oregon and northern California annually for up to 14 years (2006–2020) to test if community structure (i.e., the abundance of functional groups) and diversity were sensitive to past environmental variation. We..., Community Surveys
Starting in 2006, summer (June-August) community surveys were conducted annually at 11 sites on 4 capes (i.e., headlands or regions) from central Oregon to northern California (Fig. 1, Appendix S1: Table S1). From north to south, Capes included Cape Foulweather (sites Fogarty Creek and Boiler Bay), Cape Perpetua (sites Yachats Beach, Strawberry Hill and Tokatee Klootchman), Cape Blanco (sites Cape Blanco North and South, Port Orford Heads and Rocky Point), and Cape Mendocino (sites Cape Mendocino North and South). Scientific collection permits for this work were granted by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW 19272, 21042, 21848) and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (SC-4055, S-182930001-18295-001). With exceptions noted below, we surveyed communities separately in each of 3 intertidal zones, with the low zone defined as below mussel beds, the mid zone as mussel beds, and the high zone as above mussel beds. Because of time constraints or lack ..., Microsoft Excel
R and R Studio
PRIMER-e with PERMANOVA+ Add-on , # Resistance of rocky intertidal communities to oceanic climate fluctuations

Data for Gravem et al.

This readme file was generated on 2024-01-08 by Sarah Gravem

### Description of the data and file structure

Date of data collection: 2006-2020

Geographic location of data collection: Oregon and Northern California Coasts

Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: The National Science Foundation, The Packard Foundation, The Kingfisher Foundation

 

There are four type of data associated with this manuscript.

1\) EnvFocalNorm.xlsx includes the peak seasonal mean environmental data. These are assigned to each quadrat for use in PRIMER-e, but vary by year and site. These include 8 variables (PDO, NPGO, ENSO, Mean Upwelling, SD Upwelling, Max Daily Air Temperature, Mean Daily Sea Surface Temperature, and years since sea star wasting disease). Data are normalized. \"Call\" column matches these data to a given community survey quadrat found in FunctionalGr...