Improving habitat suitability models to understand how mesophotic coral reef distribution will respond to climate change

Project Information

fluid-dynamics, job-array, job-submission, oceanography
Project Status: In Progress
Project Region: CAREERS
Submitted By: Gaurav Khanna
Project Email: davies@uri.edu
Project Institution: University of Rhode Island -- Bay Campus
Anchor Institution: CR-University of Rhode Island

Mentors: Andrew Davies
Students: Philip Yang

Project Description

As climate change intensifies and starts to cause changes in the water column (e.g., increased temperatures and stratification) mesophotic communities (ca. 30 m to 150 m depth) will become exposed to climate change impacts that regularly influence shallow-water coral communities (i.e., < 30 m). Mesophotic coral reefs, ecosystems that have received increased attention in recent years due to new, cost-efficient ways of quantitatively studying them, contribute to the ecosystem services of U.S. coral reefs valued at US$3.4 billion per year (Brander and van Beukering 2013). Habitat suitability models help us statistically predict where important species occur in difficult to survey regions, like the ocean, and contribute to spatial planning. They have been applied to cold-water coral (Davies and Guinotte 2011) and used for mesophotic coral habitats in Hawaii (Costa et al. 2012). These models require a large amount of information and computing power to run, especially if there are ranges of environmental parameters that are tested (e.g., temperature ranges that reflect climate change scenarios). Being able to transition this work to high performance computer clusters like UNITY would transform the habitat suitability models I can run and increase the impact of my work (e.g., test how varying climate change factors impact model outcomes in a matrix) on how climate change will impact mesophotic coral community distribution in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Part of my dissertation will help improve the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary’s marine spatial management of ecosystems that they are mandated to protect and preserve.

Project Information

fluid-dynamics, job-array, job-submission, oceanography
Project Status: In Progress
Project Region: CAREERS
Submitted By: Gaurav Khanna
Project Email: davies@uri.edu
Project Institution: University of Rhode Island -- Bay Campus
Anchor Institution: CR-University of Rhode Island

Mentors: Andrew Davies
Students: Philip Yang

Project Description

As climate change intensifies and starts to cause changes in the water column (e.g., increased temperatures and stratification) mesophotic communities (ca. 30 m to 150 m depth) will become exposed to climate change impacts that regularly influence shallow-water coral communities (i.e., < 30 m). Mesophotic coral reefs, ecosystems that have received increased attention in recent years due to new, cost-efficient ways of quantitatively studying them, contribute to the ecosystem services of U.S. coral reefs valued at US$3.4 billion per year (Brander and van Beukering 2013). Habitat suitability models help us statistically predict where important species occur in difficult to survey regions, like the ocean, and contribute to spatial planning. They have been applied to cold-water coral (Davies and Guinotte 2011) and used for mesophotic coral habitats in Hawaii (Costa et al. 2012). These models require a large amount of information and computing power to run, especially if there are ranges of environmental parameters that are tested (e.g., temperature ranges that reflect climate change scenarios). Being able to transition this work to high performance computer clusters like UNITY would transform the habitat suitability models I can run and increase the impact of my work (e.g., test how varying climate change factors impact model outcomes in a matrix) on how climate change will impact mesophotic coral community distribution in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Part of my dissertation will help improve the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary’s marine spatial management of ecosystems that they are mandated to protect and preserve.