story by Helen Hill for MITgcm

This month we spotlight research using MITgcm to explore how factors beyond climate, such as dispersal limitations, impact the spread of mangroves.

While climate change is helping many species expand their range, a new study shows that it’s not the only factor affecting mangrove forests along the west coast of North America. Researchers have found that despite warmer temperatures, mangroves are not spreading northward as expected.

Mangrove forests, critical for coastal ecosystems, are sensitive to temperature changes, but the study, published in Ecography, reveals that dispersal barriers like ocean currents and fragmented habitats are preventing their floating seeds, or propagules, from reaching suitable areas further north. The paper’s authors are Kyle C. Cavanaugh (UCLA), Dustin Carroll (Moss Landing/ JPL), Rémi Bardou (U. Michigan), and Tom Van der Stocken (JPL/  Vrije Universiteit Brussel.)

Using a combination of species distribution and a high-resolution ocean model (MITgcm LLC 4320), the researchers identified climatically favorable habitats north of the current range limits in Mexico and Baja California. However, they found that ocean currents and large distances between suitable patches of estuarine habitat are blocking the mangroves’ natural dispersal. This means that despite favorable climate conditions, propagules from existing mangrove populations are unable to reach these potential new habitats.

This research sheds light on the complexity of species distribution in the face of climate change. It challenges the assumption that warmer temperatures will always lead to the northward expansion of species, highlighting the crucial role of non-climatic factors like dispersal.

Mangroves are not alone in this struggle — similar patterns are seen with other species, indicating that a broader view of ecosystem shifts is needed when predicting the impacts of climate change. While global warming is certainly reshaping ecosystems, this study emphasizes that biological and physical barriers still play a significant role in determining how far species can migrate.

To find out more about this work​ contact Kyle

Story image: Mangroves, Baja. Photo courtesy the researcher.

Related

ECCO Story Map: Scattering of Mangroves

This Month’s Featured Publication

Other New Publications last month

Amaro, Rachael Christina (2024), Illuminating Brown Dwarfs: Exploring the Impact of Irradiation in Ultracool Atmospheres Through Phase-Resolved Spectroscopy, The University of Arizona ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  2024. 31557193

Coleman Peter Blakely et al (2024), Dissipation Scaled Internal Wave Drag in a Global Heterogeneously Coupled Internal/External Mode Total Water Level Model, ESS Open Archive, doi: 10.22541/essoar.172323323.33872072/v1

Birchill, A.J. et al (2024), Pathways and timescales of Southern Ocean hydrothermal iron and manganese transport, Commun Earth Environ , doi: 10.1038/s43247-024-01564-8

Ernst, Paul Andrew (2024), New Techniques for Studying Ocean Eddy Dynamics in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Mexico,    University of South Carolina ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  2024. 30994016

Ershadifer, H. et al (2024), Suspended particulate matter in the Gulf of Oman: Spatial variations in concentration, bulk composition, and particulate metals controlled by physical and biogeochemical processes, Science of the Total Environment, doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175396

Justin Gérard et al (2024), Exploring the mechanisms of Devonian oceanic anoxia: impact of ocean dynamics, palaeogeography and orbital forcing, EGUSphere, doi: 10.5194/egusphere-2024-1983

Emma Louise Hoffman (2024), Investigating Arctic Ocean Freshwater Content and Circulation in a Changing Climate, UCSD Masters of Marine Scince Dissertation, ProQuest 30988827

Jevrejeva, S. et al (2024), Challenges, advances and opportunities in regional sea level projections: The role of ocean‐shelf dynamics, Earth’s Future, doi: 10.1029/2024EF004886

Huidong Jiang et al (2024), The integration of diel vertical migration and hydrodynamic process influences the transport of swimming crab zoea (Portunus trituberculatus), Fisheries Oceanography, doi: 10.1111/fog.12695

Zhuoqinq Jiang et al (2024), SICFormer: A 3D-Swin Transformer for Sea Ice Concentration Prediction, J. Mar. Sci. Eng., doi: 10.3390/jmse12081424

Yanhong Lai et al (2024), Ocean Circulation on Tide-locked Lava Worlds, Part I: An Idealized 2D Numerical Model, arXiv: 2408.09986 [astro-ph.EP] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.09986

Hengling Leng et al (2024), Bathymetry-constrained ocean geostrophic currents play a key role in shaping the sea ice circulation in the Canada Basin, Arctic Ocean, Environmental Research Letters, doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad6baa

Li, M. et al (2024), Responses of the Arctic sea ice drift to general warming and intraseasonal oscillation in the local atmosphere, Clim Dyn, doi: 10.1007/s00382-024-07395-9

Jie Liu et al (2024), Numerical simulation for large baseline interferometric imaging altimeter, Geodesy and Geodynamics, doi: 10.1016/j.geog.2024.07.005

Shizuo Liu and Shineng Hu (2024), Seeing through the Sea with Satellites: Reconstructing Ocean Subsurface Temperature and Salinity with Satellite Observations, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., doi: 10.5194/essd-2024-334

Zhongtian Ma et al (2024), A novel Slepian approach for determining mass-term sea level from GRACE over the South China Sea, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2024.104065

Mackay, N.et al (2024), An optimal transformation method applied to diagnose the ocean carbon budget, Geosci. Model Dev., doi: 10.5194/gmd-17-5987-2024

Daan Reijnders et al (2024), Stability Bias in Lagrangian Backtracking in Divergent Flows, via ESS Open Archive, doi: 10.22541/essoar.172408257.70342970/v1

Kenji Shimizu (2024), Fundamental Properties of Adjoint Model and Adjoint Sensitivity Under Fully Nonlinear Hydrostatic Internal Gravity Waves, JGR Oceans, doi: 10.1029/2023JC020577

Pavel Sukhonos et al (2024), Investigation of North Atlantic Salinity Long-Term Trends Based on Historical Datasets, Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, doi: 10.3390/jmse12081404

Felix Vivant et al (2024), Ocean submesoscale fronts induce diabatic heating and convective precipitation within storms, via researchSquare, doi: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4719710/v1

Wiskandt, J. and Jourdain, N. (2024), Brief Communication: Representation of heat conduction into the ice in marine ice shelf melt modeling, EGUsphere, doi: 10.5194/egusphere-2024-2239

Ruijie Ye et al (2024), Effect of turbulent mixing on the formation of intermediate nepheloid layer over the northern continental slope of the Andaman Sea, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, doi: 10.1016/j.dsr.2024.104376

Xinwen Zhang et al (2024), Lagrangian Versus Eulerian Spectral Estimates of Surface Kinetic Energy Over the Global Ocean, JGR Oceans, doi: 10.1029/2024JC021057

Do you have news about research using MITgcm? We are looking for contributions to these pages. If you have an interesting MITgcm project (ocean, atmosphere, sea-ice, physics, biology or otherwise) that you want to tell people about, get in touch. To make a post, contact Helen