Vulnerability and adaptation of US shellfisheries to ocean acidification

Ocean acidification is a global, long-term problem whose ultimate solution requires carbon dioxide reduction at a scope and scale that will take decades to accomplish successfully. Until that is achieved, feasible and locally relevant adaptation and mitigation measures are needed. To help to prioritize societal responses to ocean acidification, we present a spatially explicit, multidisciplinary vulnerability analysis of coastal human communities in the United States. We focus our analysis on shelled mollusc harvests, which are likely to be harmed by ocean acidification. Our results highlight US regions most vulnerable to ocean acidification (and why), important knowledge and information gaps, and opportunities to adapt through local actions. The research illustrates the benefits of integrating natural and social sciences to identify actions and other opportunities while policy, stakeholders and scientists are still in relatively early stages of developing research plans and responses to ocean acidification.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the Nature Publishing Group and can be found at: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html

Simulating the outcomes of resource user- and rule-based regulations in a coral reef fisheries-ecosystem model

Many political ecology debates hinge on the roles and outcomes of resource user regulation versus those arising from governance rules. Because of the difficulties of empirically testing theories of resource regulation, we evaluated the alternatives using a simulation modeling approach developed for East African coral reef fisheries where four scenarios of fisheries regulation on fish catch rates and resource ecology were evaluated. These scenarios were (1) a control simulation where fishing practices were held constant, (2) fishing that gradually incorporates fishers’ self-reported behavioral responses to declining resources, (3) rapid change where illegal gears were not allowed and effort was equally partitioned among the legal gears, and (4) gradual change where legal gears or exiting were adopted as yields decline. The model indicates that at moderate fishing effort (5 fishers/km²), the gradual behavioral change scenarios two and four produced the highest per fisher yields and maintained the highest fish biomass compared to the other two strict-control options. At high fisher numbers (10 fishers/km²), the rapid ban of illegal gear in scenario 3 had more similar ecological outcomes to gradual behavioral response scenarios 2 and 4. The model assumed no changes in behavior coming from outside the system or over longer periods of time that could potentially undermine or change the stated behavioral responses. The simulations show the difficulty of developing resource use regulations because of the complex interactions between numbers of fishers, behavioral responses, management decisions, and feedbacks to the resource. Nevertheless, the simulations indicate that at moderate fisher densities, governance strategies that allow resource users to respond to changing resources can produce better yield and resource outcomes than rigid control. Ecosystem models that do not incorporate fisher’s behavioral choices may overestimate their detrimental impacts

Designing, implementing and managing marine protected areas: Emerging trends and opportunities for coral reef nations

Coral reefs are in dire need of effective governance, yet the science and planning of coral reef protected areas largely stem from wealthy, developed nations, with very different social, economic, and cultural characteristics than the nations in which most coral reefs occur. Much has been written about coral reefs and the use of marine protected areas (MPAs) as a management tool, but emerging trends and recommendations have not been adequately synthesized for the context of developing nations. We found that 60% of studies on MPA design and planning are from North America, Australia, Europe and the Mediterranean. As a result, many recommendations about how best to design, implement and manage coral reef protected areas may need to be adapted to address the needs of other nations. Based on the literature and our experiences, we review three emerging trends in MPA design and management, and relate these to the context of coral reef developing nations. First, MPA design is evolving to merge community (usually bottom-up) and regional (usually top-down) planning approaches. Second, the increasing recognition that social and ecological systems are tightly coupled is leading to planning and management of MPAs that better incorporate the human dimensions of reef systems and their linkages with reef ecology. Finally, there has been a trend toward adaptive management of MPAs and the emergence of related ideas about adaptive planning. These three trends provide crucial and much needed opportunities for improving MPAs and their effectiveness in coral reef nations. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Coral reefs and people in a high-CO2 world: where can science make a difference to people?

Reefs and People at Risk: Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere put shallow, warm-water coral reef ecosystems, and the people who depend upon them at risk from two key global environmental stresses: 1) elevated sea surface temperature (that can cause coral bleaching and related mortality), and 2) ocean acidification. These global stressors: cannot be avoided by local management, compound local stressors, and hasten the loss of ecosystem services. Impacts to people will be most grave where a) human dependence on coral reef ecosystems is high, b) sea surface temperature reaches critical levels soonest, and c) ocean acidification levels are most severe. Where these elements align, swift action will be needed to protect people's lives and livelihoods, but such action must be informed by data and science.\ud \ud An Indicator Approach: Designing policies to offset potential harm to coral reef ecosystems and people requires a better understanding of where CO2-related global environmental stresses could cause the most severe impacts. Mapping indicators has been proposed as a way of combining natural and social science data to identify policy actions even when the needed science is relatively nascent. To identify where people are at risk and where more science is needed, we map indicators of biological, physical and social science factors to understand how human dependence on coral reef ecosystems will be affected by globally-driven threats to corals expected in a high-CO2 world. Western Mexico, Micronesia, Indonesia and parts of Australia have high human dependence and will likely face severe combined threats. As a region, Southeast Asia is particularly at risk. Many of the countries most dependent upon coral reef ecosystems are places for which we have the least robust data on ocean acidification. These areas require new data and interdisciplinary scientific research to help coral reef-dependent human communities better prepare for a high CO2 world

The Coral Triangle and Climate Change: ecosystems, people and societies at risk

The Coral Triangle stretches across six countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific (Indonesia, Philippines,\ud Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor Leste)\ud and is the richest place on earth in terms of biodiversity. In no more than 1% of the Earth’s surface, evolution has produced species and ecosystems that are unrivalled in number, colour and diversity. Within its seas, lie the richest marine communities and ecosystems found anywhere on\ud planet Earth. With over 30% of the world’s coral reefs, including 76% of the world’s reef building corals and over 35% of the world’s coral reef fish species, the Coral Triangle is remarkable and invaluable.\ud \ud This report is a summary of a comprehensive study involving over 20 experts and based on 300 peer-reviewed scientific articles

Country-level dependence on coral reef ecosystem services and future risk of coral bleaching.

<p>Bleaching risk is indicated by the year when DHW8 is first reached annually, under RCP8.5 scenario [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0164699#pone.0164699.ref024" target="_blank">24</a>,<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0164699#pone.0164699.ref025" target="_blank">25</a>]. Ocean Provinces are indicated in each panel in bold. Earlier years indicate increased bleaching risk.</p

Regional dependence, by ocean province [49], on ecosystem services and average CO₂-related threats (ocean acidification measured as projected Ω_ar levels at coral reefs in 2050 and elevated sea surface temperature as measured by year that 8 DHW are projected to occur annually).

<p>The horizontal line in the threats panel represents the mean threat for all regions (scores above this line indicate above average severity of threat). The scales for the reef fish dependence scores are broken to reduce the size of the graph. Note that the Great Barrier Reef Ocean Province includes, but is not limited to, the Great Barrier Reef.</p

A conceptual diagram linking stresses related to increased atmospheric CO₂ (elevated sea surface temperature and ocean acidification), storms, and local stressors to coral reef condition, selected ecosystem services provided by reefs, and human dependence on these ecosystem services.

<p>Solid lines represent relationships evaluated in this study.</p

Scores of human dependence on coral reef ecosystem services, by country.

<p>Panel A provides the normalized scores for human dependence on shoreline protection, Panel B shows the normalized scores for dependence on reef fisheries, and Panel C shows combined human dependence. All scores are normalized on a scale from 0–10. Higher scores reflect higher human dependence. Countries are binned by quintile in the legend.</p

Raw data and results of the normalized scoring for human dependence, by country (only countries for which data are available are shown).

<p>Ocean Provinces: Brazilian (B), Caribbean (C), Central Pacific (CP), Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Central Indian Ocean (CIO), Eastern Pacific (EP), Middle East (ME), Polynesia (P), South East Asia (SEA), Western Australia (WA), Western Indian Ocean (WIO).</p