Award: OCE-0926581

Overview: By definition climate change is a global phenomenon, and its unequivocal impacts are being observed in ecosystems around the planet. However, we also know that there is high variability in where these impacts occur, and that species vary from one another in their vulnerability. Moreover, solutions to climate change in the form of societal adaptation often occur at local scales. For example, reducing the impacts of stressors such as pollution and overharvesting can help prevent populations of organisms from hitting their "tipping point." The goal of this NSF award was to deploy a series of sensors in the intertidal zone along the west coast of North America, in an effort to document where trouble spots are most likely to occur in response to altered weather patterns driven by climate change. Using a series of "biomimetic" sensors- microcomputers that record temperatures within mussel beds- we continuously recorded temperatures that can inform physiological studies, and then created a database usable by other researchers, educators, and the public. Intellectual Merit: These instruments show that simple measurements of weather such as air temperature are surprisingly uninformative of what most animals experience in nature. Our results strongly suggest that because of the interactions between climatic and nonclimatic stressors that occur on very local scales, often the places where climate change is most likely to exert its impacts may be in unexpected- but predictable- locations. For example, because low tides in summer typically occur in the middle of the day at some sites in Washington State, they occur in early morning in parts of California. The result are a series of "hot spots" where sites farther to the north are actually much more stressful for intertidal organisms than sites to the south. Making predictions at scales useful for management and coastal adaptation therefore requires that we move past broad generalizations such as "poleward range migrations" and instead focus on the impacts of climate change at more local scales. Broader impacts: This grant supported the research projects of 5 graduate students, 4 undergraduates, 6 K-12 Teachers (as part of a Research Experience for Teachers supplemental award) and 2 High School students. It also supported the development of an educational website (northeastern.edu/helmuthlab) where we present a series of virtual tours, lesson plans, and materials that can be used by educators when discussing climate change and coastal ecology. Twenty peer reviewed journal articles, including 13 with student coauthors, cite this award. Last Modified: 10/30/2014 Submitted by: Brian Helmuth