Paper Reviewed
Strain, E.M.A., van Belzen, J., van Dalen, J., Bouma, T.J. and Airoldi, L. 2015. Management of local stressors can improve the resilience of marine canopy algae to global stressors. PLOS ONE: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120837.

Working with recruits and juveniles of the marine canopy alga Cystoseira barbata that are found along the northwestern Adriatic coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Strain et al. (2015) conducted a set of manipulative experiments they designed "to test whether reducing local stressors (sediment load and nutrient concentrations) can improve the resilience of foundation species (canopy algae along temperate rocky coastlines) to future projected global climate stressors (high wave exposure, increasing sea surface temperature) which are less amenable to management actions."

This study revealed, in the words of the five researchers, that "at current levels of sediment and nutrients, C. barbata showed negative responses to the simulated future scenarios of high wave exposure and increased sea surface temperature." But they report that "reducing the sediment load increased the survival of C. barbata recruits by 90.24% at high wave exposure while reducing nutrient concentrations resulted in a 20.14% increase in the survival and enhanced the growth of recruited juveniles at high temperature."

In light of these extremely encouraging findings, Strain et al. go on to conclude that "improving water quality by reducing nutrient concentrations, and particularly the sediment load, would significantly increase the resilience of C. barbata populations to projected increases in climate stressors." And they thus propose that "developing and applying appropriate targets for specific local anthropogenic stressors could be an effective management action to halt the severe and ongoing loss of key marine habitats."