Lab study to simulate marine organisms’ exposure to multiple stressors triggered by climate change

SCCWRP and its partners are launching a one-year laboratory study this summer that will simulate how marine organisms are impacted by ocean acidification and multiple other environmental changes triggered by climate change.

The study, scheduled to kick off in July, will control for variables including water temperature, dissolved oxygen and pH, enabling researchers to more comprehensively understand how climate change is impacting sensitive biological communities.

Considerable attention has been focused in recent years on tracking West Coast ocean acidification, but acidification will play out against a backdrop of other co-occurring environmental stressors – some of which may combine to exert synergistic impacts.

A new state-of-the-art laboratory experimental exposure system is being constructed at SCCWRP that will enable researchers to run a series of dynamic environmental exposure scenarios on a range of marine calcifiers and other organisms, including oysters, mussels, abalone, pteropods, echinoderms and juvenile pink salmon.