Precautionary spatial protection to facilitate the scientific study of habitats and communities under ice shelves in the context of recent, rapid, regional climate change
01 Jan 2013-
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight why commercial fishing activities should not be permitted in these habitats, and suggest that areas under existing ice shelves in Subareas 88.3, 48.1 and 48.5 should be preserved and protected for scientific study.
Abstract: Recent rapid climate change is now well documented in the Antarctic, particularly in the Antarctic Peninsula region. One of the most evident signs of climate change has been
ice-shelf collapse; overall, 87% of the Peninsula’s glaciers have retreated in recent decades. Further ice-shelf collapse will lead to the loss of existing marine habitats and to the creation of new habitats, with consequent changes in both ecological processes and in community structure. Habitats revealed by collapsed ice shelves therefore offer unique scientific opportunities. Given the complexity of the possible interactions, and the need to study these in the absence of any other human-induced perturbation, this paper highlights why commercial fishing activities should not be permitted in these habitats, and suggests that areas under existing ice shelves in Subareas 88.3, 48.1 and 48.5 should be preserved
and protected for scientific study. The boundaries of these areas should henceforth remain fixed, even if the ice shelves recede or collapse in the future. Designation of areas under ice shelves as areas for scientific study would fulfil one of the recommendations made by the Antarctic Treaty Meeting of Experts in 2010.
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how human impacts influence biodiversity and fish stock abundance, and the management tools that can be used to sustain fisheries, and what is needed to make them sustainable based on key biological, environmental, social, economic, industry, and management variables and associated criteria.
Abstract: Healthy marine ecosystems are vital for sustaining fisheries, poverty reduction, food security, and economic development worldwide. However failure to understand ecosystem dynamics – and particularly how they change under anthropogenic impacts – underpins major ecosystem shifts across the globe. Without robust and careful governance in place, levels of stress on ecosystems and fisheries are likely to have a continuous negative impact on biodiversity and fish stock abundance. Fish stocks are subject to a plethora of human-related impacts such as overfishing, habitat destruction, pollutants, and environmental change. Without appropriate knowledge and understanding of how to sustainably manage fisheries and the ecosystems that support them, the risk of ecological failure, fishery collapse, and ultimately social collapse is large. Despite increased efforts in fisheries research and management, improvements are still needed to restore the over-exploited fisheries and ensure sustainability of all fisheries.
The foundation of this PhD thesis is to investigate how human impacts influence biodiversity and fish stock abundance, and the management tools that can be used to sustain fisheries. This project takes a holistic approach to the risk of overfishing and fisheries collapse, and what is needed to make them sustainable based on key biological, environmental, social, economic, industry, governance, and management variables and associated criteria effecting stock abundance.
Considering the complex socio-ecological interactions that affect the sustainability of marine ecosystems and fisheries, this research investigates what sources might facilitate sustainability or trigger shifts towards overfishing or even collapse. To date this kind of holistic approach has been lacking, and this thesis is intended as one step towards redressing that gap. To better understand how to sustain fisheries a mixed method approach was used, by combining a meta-analysis of 21 fisheries, a qualitative survey of 188 fisheries experts from 34 nations, and a case-study of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). CCAMLR was used as a case-study as the ecosystems, and fisheries, within the convention area are perceived to be well-managed.
There is a consistent emergent picture across the three analyses on how to sustain fisheries. The meta-analysis showed that the 14 sustainable fisheries identified were associated with sound biological knowledge, had a large range of management tools in place, and included some element of industry control such as a paid quota system. The survey of fisheries experts confirmed these findings as well as highlighting that there are a range of management tools that have proven efficient to sustain fisheries worldwide, if implemented and applied properly and conscientiously. Further, views of the fisheries experts (representing 34 nations) are consistent with the findings of the case study of CCAMLR, governed by 25 nations. Since its beginning in 1982, CCAMLR has managed to avoid collapse of the fisheries under its remit, has overseen substantial stock recovery in areas where degradation had occurred in the past and has seen through a number of continuously up-dated conservation measures with the aim of providing for marine conservation and fisheries sustainability. These activities match the measures in place for the 14 sustainable fisheries in the meta-analysis and align well with the experts’ view on how to sustain fisheries. A common thread through the three analyses comprising the thesis is that abundant scientific knowledge and establishment of management programs is insufficient to ensure fishery sustainability, but that political will must match the level of management challenges to ensure sustainable marine ecosystems long term.
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TL;DR: 13 models of the ocean–carbon cycle are used to assess calcium carbonate saturation under the IS92a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario for future emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide and indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously.
Abstract: Today's surface ocean is saturated with respect to calcium carbonate, but increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are reducing ocean pH and carbonate ion concentrations, and thus the level of calcium carbonate saturation. Experimental evidence suggests that if these trends continue, key marine organisms—such as corals and some plankton—will have difficulty maintaining their external calcium carbonate skeletons. Here we use 13 models of the ocean–carbon cycle to assess calcium carbonate saturation under the IS92a 'business-as-usual' scenario for future emissions of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. In our projections, Southern Ocean surface waters will begin to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite, a metastable form of calcium carbonate, by the year 2050. By 2100, this undersaturation could extend throughout the entire Southern Ocean and into the subarctic Pacific Ocean. When live pteropods were exposed to our predicted level of undersaturation during a two-day shipboard experiment, their aragonite shells showed notable dissolution. Our findings indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously.
4,244 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a systemic perspective is used to identify and analyze the conceptual relations among vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity within socio-ecological systems (SES) and a set of diagnostic questions regarding the specification of the terms to develop a shared conceptual framework for the natural and social dimensions of global change.
Abstract: This article uses a systemic perspective to identify and analyze the conceptual relations among vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity within socio-ecological systems (SES). Since different intellectual traditions use the terms in different, sometimes incompatible, ways, they emerge as strongly related but unclear in the precise nature of their relationships. A set of diagnostic questions is proposed regarding the specification of the terms to develop a shared conceptual framework for the natural and social dimensions of global change. Also, development of a general theory of change in SESs is suggested as an important agenda item for research on global change.
1,999 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the significance of rapid regional (RRR) warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula, and discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming.
Abstract: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that mean global warming was 0.6 ± 0.2 °C during the 20th century and cited anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases as the likely cause of temperature rise in the last 50 years. But this mean value conceals the substantial complexity of observed climate change, which is seasonally- and diurnally-biased, decadally-variable and geographically patchy. In particular, over the last 50 years three high-latitude areas have undergone recent rapid regional (RRR) warming, which was substantially more rapid than the global mean. However, each RRR warming occupies a different climatic regime and may have an entirely different underlying cause. We discuss the significance of RRR warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula. Here warming was much more rapid than in the rest of Antarctica where it was not significantly different to the global mean. We highlight climate proxies that appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia, and so unlikely to be a natural mode of variability. So while the station records do not indicate a ubiquitous polar amplification of global warming, the RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula might be a regional amplification of such warming. This, however, remains unproven since we cannot yet be sure what mechanism leads to such an amplification. We discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming. We can show that atmospheric warming and reduction in sea-ice duration coincide in a small area on the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, but here we cannot yet distinguish cause and effect. Thus for the present we cannot determine which process is the probable cause of RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and until the mechanism initiating and sustaining the RRR warming is understood, and is convincingly reproduced in climate models, we lack a sound basis for predicting climate change in this region over the coming century.
1,158 citations
"Precautionary spatial protection to..." refers background in this paper
...Climate change is known to be regional and can occur rapidly (Vaughan et al., 2003); consequently, investigating how different parts of the Antarctic will respond has to be carried out over a variety of spatial scales....
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...Therefore, the regional nature of climate change (Vaughan et al., 2003) coupled with the high levels of endemism (Brandt, 2012) mean that community processes will vary across a range of sites....
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TL;DR: This paper reviewed the variety of definitions of resilience within sustainability science and suggested a typology according to the specific degree of normativity of the concept of resilience, and argued that a clearly specified, descriptive concept is critical in providing a counterbalance to the use of resilience as a vague boundary object.
Abstract: This article reviews the variety of definitions proposed for "resilience" within sustainability science and suggests a typology according to the specific degree of normativity. There is a tension between the original descriptive concept of resilience first defined in ecological science and a more recent, vague, and malleable notion of resilience used as an approach or boundary object by different scientific disciplines. Even though increased conceptual vagueness can be valuable to foster communication across disciplines and between science and practice, both conceptual clarity and practical relevance of the concept of resilience are critically in danger. The fundamental question is what conceptual structure we want resilience to have. This article argues that a clearly specified, descriptive concept of resilience is critical in providing a counterbalance to the use of resilience as a vague boundary object. A clear descriptive concept provides the basis for operationalization and application of resilience within ecological science.
1,150 citations
23 Mar 2010
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse les relations conceptuelles (imprecises) de la vulnerabilite, de la resilience and de la capacite d'adaptation aux changements climatiques selon le systeme socioecologique (socio-ecologigal systems -SES) afin de comprendre and anticiper le comportement des composantes sociales et ecologiques du systeme.
Abstract: Cet article analyse les relations conceptuelles (imprecises) de la vulnerabilite, de la resilience et de la capacite d’adaptation aux changements climatiques selon le systeme socio-ecologique (socio-ecologigal systems – SES) afin de comprendre et anticiper le comportement des composantes sociales et ecologiques du systeme. Une serie de questions est proposee par l’auteur sur la specification de ces termes afin de developper une structure conceptuelle qui inclut les dimensions naturelles et so...
1,133 citations
"Precautionary spatial protection to..." refers background in this paper
...In the face of climate change, long-term reference areas could also potentially increase ecosystem robustness (Brand and Jax, 2007; Gallopín, 2006), particularly where other stressors, including science, tourism and harvesting, are absent....
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