Climate-driven invasion and incipient warnings of kelp ecosystem collapse

Climate change is progressively redistributing species towards the Earth's poles, indicating widespread potential for ecosystem collapse. Detecting early-warning signals and enacting adaptation measures is therefore a key imperative for humanity. However, detecting early-warning signals has remained elusive and has focused on exceptionally high-frequency and/or long-term time-series, which are generally unattainable for most ecosystems that are under-sampled and already impacted by warming. Here, we show that a catastrophic phase-shift in kelp ecosystems, caused by range-extension of an overgrazing sea urchin, also propagates poleward. Critically, we show that incipient spatial-pattern-formations of kelp overgrazing are detectable well-in-advance of collapse along temperate reefs in the ocean warming hotspot of south-eastern Australia. Demonstrating poleward progression of collapse over 15 years, these early-warning ‘incipient barrens’ are now widespread along 500 km of coast with projections indicating that half of all kelp beds within this range-extension region will collapse by ~2030. Overgrazing was positively associated with deep boulder-reefs, yet negatively associated with predatory lobsters and subordinate abalone competitors, which have both been intensively fished. Climate-driven collapse of ecosystems is occurring; however, by looking equatorward, space-for-time substitutions can enable practical detection of early-warning spatial-pattern-formations, allowing local climate adaptation measures to be enacted in advance.

Scott D. Ling, John P. Keane