A kelp forest is a marine biome of dense underwater stands formed by large, fast-growing brown algae of the order Laminariales, rooted to rocky seafloor by holdfasts and reaching toward the surface on gas-filled blades that can grow more than thirty centimetres a day under good conditions. Kelp forests occur in cold, nutrient-rich temperate and polar coastal waters, most famously along the Pacific coasts of North America and the coasts of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and their three-dimensional canopy shelters fish, invertebrates and marine mammals in a structure often compared to a forest on land. The biome depends on grazing pressure staying in balance, since sea urchins left unchecked by predators such as sea otters can strip a kelp forest to bare rock in what ecologists call an urchin barren.
Facts
Climate
Typical Low Temperature (C)7C is a representative cold-water kelp forest site (northern Scotland) from the cited study of Laminaria hyperborea, used as representative of kelp forests generally. Typical High Temperature (C)21C is the cited study's own stated upper thermal survival limit for Laminaria hyperborea; other kelp genera (e.g. Macrocystis) tolerate slightly higher. Annual precipitation left unfilled: kelp forests are fully submerged coastal habitats with no direct precipitation exposure, the same reasoning already applied to Coral Reef, Marine and Mangrove Forest. Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
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