Global floating kelp forests have limited protection despite intensifying marine heatwave threats

Nur Arafeh-Dalmau; Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez; David S Schoeman; Alejandra Mora-Soto; Tom W Bell; Claire L Butler; Maycira Costa; Loyiso V Dunga; Henry F Houskeeper; Cristian Lagger; Carolina Pantano; Daniela Laínez Del Pozo; Kerry J Sink; Jennifer Sletten; Timothe Vincent; Fiorenza Micheli; Kyle C Cavanaugh

doi:10.1038/s41467-025-58054-4

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Global floating kelp forests have limited protection despite intensifying marine heatwave threats

Journal article

Open access

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Global floating kelp forests have limited protection despite intensifying marine heatwave threats

Nur Arafeh-Dalmau, Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez, David S Schoeman, Alejandra Mora-Soto, Tom W Bell, Claire L Butler, Maycira Costa, Loyiso V Dunga, Henry F Houskeeper, Cristian Lagger, …

Nature Communications, Vol.16(1), pp.1-12

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58054-4

PMCID: PMC11968876

PMID: 40180911

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Abstract

conservation biology

projection and prediction

Kelp forests are one of the earth's most productive ecosystems and are at great risk from climate change, yet little is known regarding their current conservation status and global future threats. Here, by combining a global remote sensing dataset of floating kelp forests with climate data and projections, we find that exposure to projected marine heatwaves will increase ~6 to ~16 times in the long term (2081-2100) compared to contemporary (2001-2020) exposure. While exposure will intensify across all regions, some southern hemisphere areas which have lower exposure to contemporary and projected marine heatwaves may provide climate refugia for floating kelp forests. Under these escalating threats, less than 3% of global floating kelp forests are currently within highly restrictive marine protected areas (MPAs), the most effective MPAs for protecting biodiversity. Our findings emphasize the urgent need to increase the global protection of floating kelp forests and set bolder climate adaptation goals.

Details

Title: Global floating kelp forests have limited protection despite intensifying marine heatwave threats
Authors: Nur Arafeh-Dalmau (Corresponding Author) - Stanford University
Juan Carlos Villaseñor-Derbez - Stanford University
David S Schoeman - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Alejandra Mora-Soto - University of Victoria
Tom W Bell - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Claire L Butler - University of Tasmania
Maycira Costa - University of Victoria
Loyiso V Dunga - University of Cape Town
Henry F Houskeeper - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Cristian Lagger - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Carolina Pantano - Fundación Por El Mar (PEM), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Daniela Laínez Del Pozo
Kerry J Sink - Nelson Mandela University
Jennifer Sletten - Anthropocene Institute (United States)
Timothe Vincent - Anthropocene Institute (United States)
Fiorenza Micheli - Stanford University
Kyle C Cavanaugh - University of California, Los Angeles
Publication details: Nature Communications, Vol.16(1), pp.1-12
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58054-4
ISSN: 2041-1723
PMID: 40180911; PMC11968876
Copyright note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Data Availability: The remote-sensing kelp forest dataset is available at https://portal.edirepository.org/nis/mapbrowse?packageid=knb-lter-sbc.74.13, https://kelpwatch.org/map, and https://biogeoscienceslaboxford.users.earthengine.app/view/kelpforests. The marine protected area database is available at https://protectedseas.net/ upon request. The marine ecoregions of the world dataset is avaiable at https://databasin.org/datasets/3b6b12e7bcca419990c9081c0af254a2/. The compiled global floating kelp forest map and the processed marine protected area layer is available at Zenodo under the identifier https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14796879. The raw data from figures and tables in this study are provided in the Source Data file. Source data are provided with this paper.
Grant note: N.A.-D., K.C., and T.B. acknowledge support from the NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry program (80NSSC21K1429). N.A.-D. acknowledges support from the Estate Winifred Violet Scott (Australia) for a research grant. F.M., N.A-D., and J.C.-D., acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (2108566). N.A.-D., F.M., and K.C. acknowledge funding from the Lenfest Ocean Program (ID Number: 00036969).
Organisation Unit: School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991118152402621
Output Type: Journal article

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