Hurricane Sandy was a fearsome reminder that coastal communities are highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and environmental variability and that vulnerability is only expected to increase with climate change. Brown University scientists Heather Leslie and Leila Sievanen, members of an interdisciplinary research team focused on human-environment interactions in coastal regions, discussed these challenges at […]
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Former Brown undergraduate Joey Bernhardt and Prof. Heather Leslie just published a synthetic review on ecological resilience to climate change in the Annual Review of Marine Science. The abstract follows; navigate to the site to see the full review, or contact Heather for a PDF. Abstract. Ecological resilience to climate change is a combination […]
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On October 5, 2011, three members of our group – Marcy Cockrell, Kara Woo, and Bridgette Black – attended the second annual research conference held by the Research Association for Research on the Gulf of Maine (RARGOM) in Portsmouth, NH. The major theme for the conference was “The nexus between climate change and marine spatial […]
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Marine scientists at Brown University have determined that the size of rocks in rocky intertidal areas is important to the survival of a common marine animal, the acorn barnacle. The bigger the rock, the less its temperature fluctuates during hot spells. That’s better for the barnacle, which needs rock temperatures to not exceed a certain […]
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Leila Sievanen, Leslie Lab postdoc, and Heather Leslie will be speaking at the annual meeting of AAAS in Washington, DC later this week on the need to better understand the ocean’s varied habitats and how they change over time, as well as the need to involve all constituencies in conservation and management discussions. Heather’s talk […]
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Caribbean and Atlantic coral reefs suffered record losses due to extreme heat in 2005. In the most comprehensive assessment of regional coral bleaching, scientists from over 22 countries, including Brown’s Sheila Walsh, report that over 80% of corals bleached and 40% died. These losses are especially alarming because Caribbean corals are already in peril due […]
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Leslie lab member and Brown-MBL PhD student Sarah Corman was awarded the National Park Service’s George Melendez Wright Climate Change Fellowship this summer, to support her regional studies of productivity and phenology of the salt marsh foundation species Spatina alterniflora The goals of this student fellowship program are to support new and innovative research on […]
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Leslie lab postdoc Sheila Walsh recently was interviewed about Kiribati, where she conducted her doctoral research, by The Yale Globalist and Change.org. Congrats, Sheila! See: http://environment.change.org/blog/view/theres_no_pro_side_to_sea_level_rise_in_kiribati http://tyglobalist.org/index.php/20091230246/Focus/The-Tides-of-Change.html
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Conservation social science is the study of aspects of human society, including relationships among humans and between humans and their environment, that are relevant to conservation of Earth’s biological diversity. As articles herein emphasize, achieving the vast majority of conservation objectives requires changes in human behavior. Diverse societal structures and processes, from resource tenure systems […]
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Don’t shun the ocean – IUCN tells climate leaders ** This information was provided by Dorothée Herr, Marine Programme Officer, IUCN Global Marine Programme via the MARINE listserve of The Society for Conservation Biology ** The IUCN recently released The Ocean and Climate Change – Tools and Guidelines for Action, to help decision-makers […]
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