Assessment of ecosystem services of an urbanized tropical estuary with a focus on habitats and scenarios

Tropical estuaries are one of the most valuable ecosystems on the planet because of the number of ecosystem services they provide. The increasing anthropogenic pressure to which these estuaries are subject has caused a reduction in their natural capital stock. Therefore, the application of a pragmatic and rational ecosystem-based management approach to sustainably manage the multiple ecosystem services provided by this ecosystem is necessary. The aim of our study is to present an approach that combines prospective scenarios with habitat-based perspective to assess the supply capacity of ecosystem services, plus determine the impact of protected areas in an urbanized tropical estuary. The current situation and two scenarios were generated to evaluate the capacity of habitats to supply ecosystem services. This type of assessment will allow the decision makers to visualize the effect of their choices or the occurrence of events which might produce significant changes in the estuary. Thus, over time, measures can be taken to sustain the supply of ecosystem services. We determined that the establishment of protected areas have a positive impact; however, the effect is not the same for all of them. Consequently, indicating that actions such as community participation, research, education, management planning and infrastructure development must accompany the development of a protected area

New climatic targets against global warming: will the maximum 2 degrees C temperature rise affect estuarine benthic communities?

The Paris Agreement signed by 195 countries in 2015 sets out a global action plan to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to remain below 2 degrees C. Under that premise, in situ experiments were run to test the effects of 2 degrees C temperature increase on the benthic communities in a seagrass bed and adjacent bare sediment, from a temperate European estuary. Temperature was artificially increased in situ and diversity and ecosystem functioning components measured after 10 and 30 days. Despite some warmness effects on the analysed components, significant impacts were not verified on macro and microfauna structure, bioturbation or in the fluxes of nutrients. The effect of site/ habitat seemed more important than the effects of the warmness, with the seagrass habitat providing more homogenous results and being less impacted by warmness than the adjacent bare sediment. The results reinforce that most ecological responses to global changes are context dependent and that ecosystem stability depends not only on biological diversity but also on the availability of different habitats and niches, highlighting the role of coastal wetlands. In the context of the Paris Agreement it seems that estuarine benthic ecosystems will be able to cope if global warming remains below 2 degrees C.The authors would like to thank P. Cardoso, S. Leston e M. D'Ambrosio who helped in field and laboratorial work. This research was supported by FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), through the grants attributed to D Crespo (SFRH/BD/80252/2011), T F Grilo (SFRH/BPD/98590/2013), J P Coelho (SFRH/BPD/102870/2014), I Fernandes (SFRH/BPD/97656/2013), to Investigador FCT programme attributed to M. Dolbeth (IF/00919/2015) and BIOCHANGED project (PTDC/MAR/111901/2009), subsidized by the European Social Fund and MCTES (Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education), through the POPH (Human Potential Operational Programme), QREN (National Strategic Reference Framework) and COMPETE (Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade). Thanks are also due, for the financial support to CESAM (UID/AMB/50017/2013), to FCT/MEC through national funds, and the co-funding by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement and Compete 2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio