Principal Investigators: Russell J. Schmitt (UCSB) and Steven N. Murray (Fullerton)

Introduction

Rocky intertidal habitats throughout Southern California are increasingly being exposed to human-generated disturbances ranging from increased inputs of pollutants from point and non-point discharges to the damaging effects of high visitor use at favored sites.  Moreover, sea temperatures throughout the region have risen gradually over the last two decades, a period also marked by increasing frequencies of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events and large scale changes in many planktonic and pelagic marine populations.  Over the past two decades, these changing environmental conditions have coincided with significant declines in species richness and in the abundances of many ecologically-important species in rocky intertidal habitats throughout Southern California.  Data are needed to increase our understanding of relationships between natural and human-induced changes in environmental conditions and spatial and temporal variations in the distributions and abundances of rocky intertidal populations.  This project continues the Orange County component of a program designed to collect long-term data describing changes in rocky intertidal populations throughout the region.  The continued collection of these data will help identify environmental correlates with changing patterns of species distributions and abundances, and it is a necessary step towards the development of meaningful process-oriented studies.  Furthermore, these data are needed by Minerals Management Services (MMS) to separate changes in vulnerable intertidal communities resulting from oil and gas development or spills from other natural or human-generated alterations in coastal ecosystems.  Governmental managers and agencies throughout Southern California also will benefit from results of these studies because changes in intertidal communities taking place at sites adjacent to new coastal developments can be placed in regional context.  The ability to improve understanding of regional changes will become increasingly important to managers in this era of increasing public concern for coastal marine communities, particularly if these continue to show declines in biodiversity over the next few decades.   

This work is part of a region-wide intertidal monitoring program that includes the monitoring sites distributed from San Luis Obispo to San Diego Counties.  Summarized results for selected species are available to the public at: www.marine.gov

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