Post Doctoral Fellow

Oceans Program

Environmental Defense Fund

Mark Carr, Michael W. Beck

My research interests are focused on the role of kelp forests canopies as essential biogenic habitat, on assessing the impacts of kelp canopy loss on fish and invertebrate biodiversity in kelp ecosystems, and to develop best management practices for kelp beds.

Kelp forests habitats are patchy and subject to frequent disturbances, the relationship between different disturbance agents and their effects on the resiliency of kelp forest associated fauna in an important dynamic to understand and to be able to predict. Kelp forest communities provide a tractable system in which to examine the consequence of different types of disturbance in an open patchy system. Kelp forest canopies are inherently patchy at all stages of development. In forested habitat (boreal forest, kelp forests) disturbances range from pruning, where only parts of plants are lost, to loss of the whole plants and clumps of plants, to catastrophic events where extensive areas are destroyed. It is the structure and presence of a habitat that influences many of the processes that determine the diversity and abundance of biota. Understanding which process acts to facilitate and which acts to exclude species from an assemblage provides knowledge not only of how communities assemble themselves within a geographic range, but also of how their future state may differ in a rapidly changing environment affected by human activity. I have designed as series manipulations to conduct this summer, to look at different disturbance regimes (variable frequency, magnitude and spatial scales) and how they affect the resiliency of the structure and function of Macrocystis pyrifera canopy communities.

2002-2005 Global Marine Initiative, The Nature Conservancy

2001 Academy of Natrual Sciences, The Patrick Center