We invite suitably qualified individuals to apply for MSc, PhD and post-doc funding to participate in desktop and/or field research into the Thermal Characteristics of the South African Nearshore: Implications for Biodiversity. Seawater temperature relates at local, regional and global scales to various measures of biodiversity, and has aided our understanding of the evolution and ecology of biological assemblages. A practical application of the relationship between marine biodiversity and temperature is systematic conservation planning, and in an era dominated by anthropogenic perturbations to the climate system, future patterns in biodiversity and ecological function may also be estimated from projected climate scenarios. Irrespective of the objectives of biogeographical research and studies of climate change/variability, it is important that the investigations are supported by reliable, accurate and precise temperature data, whether they are static long-term climatologies, or dynamic time series from which coefficients relating to the rate of change in temperature with time can be extracted. This research focuses on the static/dynamic properties of the inshore temperature regime of South Africa, and consequences thereof for biodiversity. Although biogeographic patterns have been compared to seawater temperatures around our coast in the past, a new data set of inshore temperatures now makes it possible to undertake more detailed investigations into the properties of the seawater thermal regime that structure biodiversity. This research has two main themes: 1. The oceanographic drivers that modulate the inshore (
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 15:20:00 +0000
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