Map is first to track global human influences on ocean ecosystems

Micheli and her colleagues already are fleshing out one corner of their modeled world by gathering empirical data for marine ecosystems of the California Current region; the current flows south from Alaska along the coasts of Washington, Oregon, California and Baja California. When that project is complete, they will present their findings to environmental agencies, including the administrations of the marine sanctuaries off the western U.S. coast.

Micheli also will present a talk titled "Trophic Responses in Marine Reserves: Lessons from Temperate and Tropical Ecosystems" on Saturday, Feb. 16, in a symposium starting at 1:45 p.m. at the AAAS meeting. Focusing on how marine food webs recover in marine reserves, she will present examples of studies from tropical and temperate reef ecosystems. Of 920 species surveyed in 31 reserves, about 60 percent benefited from the reserves, Micheli said. She said these reserves have "an effect, not on just individual species but also on the structure of the whole food web, with greater abundances of top predators in reserves than unprotected areas." Marine reserves were first implemented in the 1960s, but Micheli said many have been established in the past decade, and studies are now answering long-standing questions about how well they work.

Micheli is affiliated with the Center for Ocean Solutions, a new collaboration among Stanford, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute that brings together experts in marine science and policy to find innovative ways to protect and restore the world's oceans.

The other principal investigators on the project are Benjamin Halpern of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California-Santa Barbara, Kimberly Selkoe of NCEAS and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and Carrie Kappel of NCEAS.

Funding was provided by NCEAS, the National Science Foundation and a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to NCEAS.

Hayley Rutger is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.