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Kelp forests are underwater areas ... The relative importance of top-down versus bottom-up control in kelp forest ecosystems and the strengths of trophic interactions ...
This "kelp highway hypothesis" suggested that highly productive kelp forests supported rich and diverse marine food webs in nearshore waters, including many types of fish, shellfish, birds, marine mammals, and seaweeds that were similar from Japan to California, Erlandson and his colleagues also argued that coastal kelp forests reduced wave ...
Trophic cascades are powerful indirect interactions that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is suppressed. For example, a top-down cascade will occur if predators are effective enough in predation to reduce the abundance, or alter the behavior of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate ...
An alternative offset would be to cultivate kelp forests. Kelp can grow at 2 feet per day, 30 times faster than terrestrial plants. Planting kelp across 10% of the oceans (4.5 x the area of Australia) could provide the same offset. Additionally, the kelp would support a fish harvest of 2 megatons per year and reduce ocean acidification. Large ...
Others theories have emphasized "bottom-up" factors, including abiotic environmental variables affecting urchin recruitment and the abundance and resiliency of kelp (including water temperature, nutrients, pollution, and other factors). Today, many scientists acknowledge that there is a mix of top-down and bottom-up factors that affect when ...
Where the bottom is rocky and affords places for it to anchor, giant kelp forms extensive kelp beds with large "floating canopies". [8] When present in large numbers, giant kelp forms kelp forests that are home to many marine species that depend upon the kelp directly for food and shelter, or indirectly as a hunting ground for prey.
The Giant kelp marine forests of south east Australia is a community extending from the ocean floor to the ocean surface, on a rocky substrate, and has a ‘forest-like’ structure with many organisms occupying its various layers, including pelagic and demersal fishes, sea birds, turtles and marine mammals in addition to the invertebrate ...
Kelp forests Kelp forests are a variation of rocky reefs, as the kelp requires a fairly strong and stable substrate which can withstand the loads of repeated waves dragging on the kelp plants. The Sea bamboo Ecklonia maxima grows in water which is shallow enough to allow it to reach to the surface with its gas-filled stipes, so that the fronds ...