Marine climate-change ecology, biodiversity redistribution, and conservation planning.
Dr Isaac Brito-Morales
My research links climate velocity, species distribution modelling, and conservation planning to forecast marine biodiversity redistribution and design climate-smart ocean protection.
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Research Program
Marine species are already shifting as the ocean changes. My work focuses on understanding those shifts and translating them into something useful for conservation, from climate metrics and 3D species distribution models to tools that can support marine planning, protected areas, and policy.
10+ papers
published or in press
Flagship journals
Nature Climate Change, TREE, Nature
Applied leadership
analysis, senior-author, and writing roles
Funded projects
IKI Save the Blue Five and Belmont Forum Ocean Front Change
Selected Publications
Three first-author papers anchor the research program; the full publication page includes contribution roles, DOI links, preprints, and code repositories.
Towards climate-smart, three-dimensional protected areas for biodiversity conservation in the high seas.
Brito-Morales I, Schoeman DS, Everett J, Klein CJ, Dunn D, Garcia Molinos J, Burrows MT, Buenafe KCV, Dominguez RM, Possingham HP, Richardson AJ. Nature Climate Change 12, 402-407.
climate adaptation conservation planning high seas spatial ecology
Why it matters: Advances climate-smart, depth-aware protected-area design for biodiversity conservation beyond national jurisdictions.
Climate velocity reveals increasing exposure of deep-ocean biodiversity to future warming.
Brito-Morales I, Schoeman DS, Garcia Molinos J, Burrows MT, Klein CJ, Arafeh-Dalmau N, Kaschner K, Garilao C, Kesner-Reyes K, Richardson AJ. Nature Climate Change 10, 576-581.
climate velocity marine biodiversity deep ocean global change ecology
Why it matters: Shows that deep-ocean biodiversity faces increasing climate exposure, extending climate-risk assessment beyond surface ecosystems.
Climate velocity can inform conservation in a warming world.
Brito-Morales I, Garcia Molinos J, Schoeman DS, Burrows MT, Poloczanska ES, Brown CJ, Ferrier S, Harwood TD, Klein CJ, McDonald-Madden E, Moore PJ, Pandolfi JM, Watson JEM, Wenger AS, Richardson AJ. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33, 441-457.
climate velocity conservation science climate adaptation spatial ecology
Why it matters: A widely used synthesis linking climate velocity metrics to conservation decisions under climate change.
Research Tools & Projects
Applied outputs include Shiny viewers, climate-data pipelines, and reusable teaching/workshop material that make ocean-climate and biodiversity data easier to inspect, model, and use in conservation decisions.
Ocean Downscaling Viewer
High-resolution derived ocean products for mapping, inspection, and summary statistics across baseline and future layers.
Megafauna Data Viewer
Marine megafauna occurrence records for filtering, mapping, and data-ready review in the Southeast Pacific.
Ocean Fronts and Biodiversity
Research on how dynamic oceanographic fronts structure marine biodiversity, migratory megafauna habitat, and conservation priorities.
Teaching & Supervision
Teaching Areas
Quantitative ecology, climate-change biology, spatial modelling, marine conservation, biodiversity data science, statistics, and reproducible R workflows.
Instruction & Workshops
UCSB ESM240 Climate Change Biology; UQ data-analysis and biostatistics courses; workshops on ocean models, marine megafauna, CMIP data, Git/GitHub, and conservation workflows.
Future Research Directions
Forecasting Redistribution
Integrate climate velocity, 3D ocean conditions, species traits, and uncertainty-aware biodiversity models.
Linking Models to Planning
Connect biodiversity models to protected-area design, dynamic management, and marine spatial planning across depth, time, and jurisdiction.
Building Adaptation Tools
Translate ocean-climate data into decision-support products for governance, protected-area design, and conservation practice.