Future sea-level rise drives rocky intertidal habitat loss and benthic community change

Abstract

Rocky intertidal ecosystems may be particularly susceptible to sea-level rise impacts but few studies have explored community scale response to future sea-level scenarios. Combining remote-sensing with large-area imaging, we quantify habitat extent and describe biological community structure at two rocky intertidal study locations in California. We then estimate changes in habitat area and community composition under a range of sea-level rise scenarios using a model-based approach. Our results suggest that future sea-level rise will significantly reduce rocky intertidal area at our study locations, leading to an overall decrease in benthic habitat and a reduction in overall invertebrate abundances, but increased densities of certain taxa. These results suggest that sea-level rise may fundamentally alter the structure and function of rocky intertidal systems. As large scale environmental changes such as sea-level rise accelerate in the next century, more extensive spatially-explicit monitoring at ecologically relevant scales will be needed to visualize and quantify the impacts to biological systems.