The remains of change: how shifting disturbance regimes leave novel legacies that impact coral reef resilience

Under global change, regimes of ecological disturbance are shifting, which in some cases creates novel physical environments where post-disturbance community assembly now takes place. Understanding how these novel environments influence ecological processes and species interactions that underlie ecosystem resilience will be crucial for conservation of natural systems. On coral reefs, tropical storms that create powerful waves and scour corals from the reef were historically the main agent of disturbance. In recent decades, episodes of coral bleaching caused by marine heatwaves have become an additional, prevalent source of mass coral mortality, but these differ from storms in that they leave behind structurally complex canopies of dead coral skeletons—a type of material legacy. Through a combination of mathematical modeling, remote sensing, and field experimentation, I explored how remnant dead coral skeletons left after marine heatwaves modify key ecological processes that underpin coral reef resilience and how this can cascade to shape post-disturbance trajectories of community assembly. Now as a postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab, I am leveraging the NSF-funded Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network to explore more broadly how material legacies of foundation species (e.g., trees, oysters, marshgrasses) shape ecosystem resilience across marine and terrestrial systems. As material legacies become more prominent ecological features, a critical need emerges to understand their powerful roles in shaping ecosystem resilience, as well as what roles we may be able to play in leveraging these legacies for desirable outcomes.