Potential impacts of geoengineering the Earth's climate on marine biodiversity, ecosystems and protected areas

Climate engineering, known as geoengineering, is the deliberate and large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s climate to minimise adverse effects of global warming. Geoengineering can be considered a worse-case scenario that might be necessary if we do not mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists are seriously exploring several geoengineering approaches, including their economic feasibility and their practical implementation. However, potential risks of geoengineering on marine biodiversity, ecosystems and the efficacy of protected areas is unknown. In this project, the student will build on our existing work on the impacts of climate change on marine biodiversity and on protected area networks by constructing a suite of distribution models for marine species. We will then use these models to assess the impact of various geoengineering scenarios on marine biodiversity, ecosystems and various protected area network configurations. We are looking for a student interested in marine conservation and quantitative ecology.