What Makes a Healthy Kelp Forest?

This infographic explores kelp forest dynamics in the Santa Barbara Channel, focusing on Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). Urchin overpopulation, driven by predator loss, poses a major threat to kelp. The plots examine predator-prey interactions and their impact on kelp abundance, highlighting the importance of balance for a healthy ecosystem.

All the data used to develop this infographic comes from the Santa Barbara Coastal Long Term Ecological Research database. The data wrangling and plot generation was completed in R. The species images were drawn by hand in Procreate and the infographic was assembled in Affinity Designer.