Call for Papers on Long-Term Change in Eastern Boundary Current Upwelling Biomes
Coastal upwelling biomes are found along the eastern boundaries of all major ocean basins. They exhibit large gradients of ocean conditions over small geographic distances while encompassing incredibly productive marine fisheries. Long-term observations document dramatic shifts in zooplankton and forage fish assemblages associated with changes in climatic modes and provide evidence for understanding mechanisms leading to these ecological transitions and the interplay between changing ocean climate, community structure, and ecosystem dynamics. These regions also include biogeographic boundary regions that serve as an early sentinel of climate change.
BioScience will publish a special issue on eastern boundary current biomes and invites articles that synthesize results investigating the functioning of these ecosystems and their responses to climate change. Pertinent topics are extremely broad and span physical drivers to food-web dynamics. The goal is to synthesize these diverse research topics for a broader range of ecologists to facilitate cross-ecosystem idea exchange.
This special issue is motivated, in part, by research conducted by the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program in combination with the 75-year (ongoing) spatially resolved CalCOFI timeseries. This research takes a whole ecosystem approach to quantifying the relative importance (at multiple trophic levels) of four principal mechanisms that can lead to observed ecosystem shifts: modified alongshore advection of different assemblages, in situ food web changes in response to altered stratification and nutrient supply, changes in cross-shore transport and loss/retention of organisms, and variability in top-down pressure. This proposed special issue will synthesize 20+ years of CCE LTER research (and 75+ years of CalCOFI long-term observations) towards an understanding of the primary drivers of ecosystem change and the linkages between different populations across trophic levels, while providing novel perspectives on future change in the CCE and other related biomes. While this special issue is motivated by research conducted by the CCE LTER program, we highly encourage submissions related to other eastern boundary upwelling systems globally.
Submission will target late spring 2025, with a 1 June submission deadline and publication by early 2026. We are seeking to have a broad coverage of topics that will introduce a wide range of ecologists, biologists, and stakeholders to the eastern boundary current systems.
We envision that most submissions will fall within Overview and Forum categories, which are peer-reviewed syntheses that advance the science. However, authors may want to consider other BioScience submission categories, excluding opinion categories, such as Viewpoints. For a full description of the BioScience submission categories with guidelines, please see our Author Guidelines. Prior to submission, please send an email including a working title, author list, and brief description of your proposed submission to any of the Editorial Board members listed below, and cc’ BioScience Editor-in-Chief, Charles Fenster:
Michael Stukel (mstukel@fsu.edu)
Katherine Barbeau (kbarbeau@ucsd.edu)
Charles Fenster (charles.fenster@sdstate.edu)
