Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 52: Extreme events

DY 52.5: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 10. März 2016, 12:30–12:45, H47

Harmful algal blooms as extreme events: Connectivity patterns in a coastal ecosystem — •Stephan Bialonski — Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are extreme events that can cause large-scale marine mortality incidents and affect human health and economy. Since HABs are observed to become more frequent and intense due to climate change, a better understanding of the mechanisms leading to their occurrence is highly desirable and may inform the development of mitigation and prevention strategies. We study the occurrence of HABs in the Southern California Bight, an area for which such events are well documented. Our cross-correlation analyses of HAB monitoring data and our Lagrangian particle simulations support the hypothesis that transport pathways, in addition to local environmental conditions, decisively influence the spatiotemporal sequence of occurrences of such extreme events in the study area. The observed connectivity patterns can be interpreted as a temporal directed network in which different regions (nodes) are temporarily connected via ocean flows (links). We speculate that deeper insights into the complex interaction between hydrodynamics and population dynamics will pave the way for methods with increased power to predict harmful algal blooms.