Communicating climate risk: a toolkit

The Communicating Climate Risk toolkit draws together best practice on the effective communication of climate information from across STEM, social sciences, and arts and humanities. It provides users with insights, recommendations, and tools for all forms of climate-related communication and decision-making, and identifies open problems

The economic value of environmental data: a notional insurance scheme for the European anchovy

Anchovy population dynamics in the Gulf of Cádiz are governed by environmental processes. Sea surface temperature, intense easterly winds, and discharges from the Guadalquivir River have been identified as key factors determining early life stage mortality in this anchovy stock. We have constructed an environment-based recruitment model that simulates the abundance of juveniles under alternative parameters representing plausible biological hypotheses. We are able to evaluate how modelling environment-based recruitment can affect stock assessment and how responding to environmental information can benefit fishery management to allow greater average catch levels through the application of harvest control rules (HCRs) based on environmental conditions. While the environment-based rules generally increase allowable catch levels the variance in catch levels also increases, detracting from the improved value based only on average yield. In addition to changes in revenue, the probability of stock collapse is also reduced by using environmental factors in HCRs. To assess the value of these management systems we simulate a notional insurance scheme, which applies a value to both average yields and uncertainty. The value of the information-driven rules can be determined by comparing the relevant premiums payable for equal levels of insurance cover on revenue within each specific management regime. We demonstrate the net value of incorporating environmental factors in the management of anchovies in the Gulf of Cádiz despite the increased variability in revenue. This could be an effective method to describe outcomes for both commercial fisheries and ecosystem management policies, and as a guide to management of other species whose dynamics are predictable based on in-season observations

On the role of visualisation in fisheries management

Environmental change has focused the attention of scientists, policy makers and the wider public on the uncertainty inherent in interactions between people and the environment. Governance in fisheries is required to involve stakeholder participation and to be more inclusive in its remit, which is no longer limited to ensuring a maximum sustainable yield from a single stock but considers species and habitat interactions, as well as social and economic issues. The increase in scope, complexity and awareness of uncertainty in fisheries management has brought methodological and institutional changes throughout the world. Progress towards comprehensive, explicit and participatory risk management in fisheries depends on effective communication. Graphic design and data visualisation have been underused in fisheries for communicating science to a wider range of stakeholders. In this paper, some of the general aspects of designing visualisations of modelling results are discussed and illustrated with examples from the EU funded MYFISH project. These infographics were tested in stakeholder workshops, and improved through feedback from that process. It is desirable to convey not just modelling results but a sense of how reliable various models are. A survey was developed to judge reliability of different components of fisheries modelling: the quality of data, the quality of knowledge, model validation efforts, and robustness to key uncertainties. The results of these surveys were visualized for ten different models, and presented alongside the main case study.Versión del editor1,86

Genetic variants of HvCbf14 are statistically associated with frost tolerance in a European germplasm collection of Hordeum vulgare

Two quantitative trait loci (Fr-H1 and Fr-H2) for frost tolerance (FT) have been discovered on the long arm of chromosome 5H in barley. Two tightly linked groups of CBF genes, known to play a key role in the FT regulatory network in A. thaliana, have been found to co-segregate with Fr-H2. Here, we investigate the allelic variations of four barley CBF genes (HvCbf3, HvCbf6, HvCbf9 and HvCbf14) in a panel of European cultivars, landraces and H. spontaneum accessions. In the cultivars a reduction of nucleotide and haplotype diversities in CBFs compared with the landraces and the wild ancestor H. spontaneum, was evident. In particular, in cultivars the loss of HvCbf9 genetic variants was higher compared to other sequences. In order to verify if the pattern of CBF genetic variants correlated with the level of FT, an association procedure was adopted. The pairwise analysis of linkage disequilibrium (LD) among the genetic variants in four CBF genes was computed to evaluate the resolution of the association procedure. The pairwise plotting revealed a low level of LD in cultivated varieties, despite the tight physical linkage of CBF genes analysed. A structured association procedure based on a general liner model was implemented, including the variants in CBFs, of Vrn-H1, and of two reference genes not involved in FT (α-Amy1 and Gapdh) and considering the phenotypic data for FT. Association analysis recovered two nucleotide variants of HvCbf14 and one nucleotide variant of Vrn-H1 as statistically associated to FT

Capturing Ecosystem Services, Stakeholders' Preferences and Trade-Offs in Coastal Aquaculture Decisions : A Bayesian Belief Network Application

Aquaculture activities are embedded in complex social-ecological systems. However, aquaculture development decisions have tended to be driven by revenue generation, failing to account for interactions with the environment and the full value of the benefits derived from services provided by local ecosystems. Trade-offs resulting from changes in ecosystem services provision and associated impacts on livelihoods are also often overlooked. This paper proposes an innovative application of Bayesian belief networks - influence diagrams - as a decision support system for mediating trade-offs arising from the development of shrimp aquaculture in Thailand. Senior experts were consulted (n = 12) and primary farm data on the economics of shrimp farming (n = 20) were collected alongside secondary information on ecosystem services, in order to construct and populate the network. Trade-offs were quantitatively assessed through the generation of a probabilistic impact matrix. This matrix captures nonlinearity and uncertainty and describes the relative performance and impacts of shrimp farming management scenarios on local livelihoods. It also incorporates export revenues and provision and value of ecosystem services such as coastal protection and biodiversity. This research shows that Bayesian belief modeling can support complex decision-making on pathways for sustainable coastal aquaculture development and thus contributes to the debate on the role of aquaculture in social-ecological resilience and economic development

Visualising uncertainty a short introduction

How should we understand and visualise the uncertainty inherent in decision-making? A Publication of the Analysis Under Uncertainty for Decision Makers Networ

Identification and prioritization of uncertainties for management of Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus)

In recent decades there has been steady progress towards a risk-based management approach for fisheries. An important first step in a risk analysis framework is scoping to identify, describe and catalog the sources of uncertainty that might have an impact on a fishery. This paper introduces a methodology based on a range of tools to formalize the process of elicitation of uncertainties, from both experts and stakeholders, for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). ICCAT is a regional fisheries management organization responsible for the conservation of tunas and other highly migratory fish in the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas. The aim of the elicitation was to identify and prioritize uncertainties for inclusion in Operating Models for Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE). The tool presented in this paper supports the qualitative prioritization of uncertainties, while also visualizing the degree of consensus among stakeholders on particular issues. Perceptions of uncertainty in fisheries often vary widely among scientists, industry and other interest groups, so tools that can facilitate inclusion and representation of different opinions are useful where decision-making depends on broad agreement and more generally, where effective management depends on commitment from stakeholders

Communicating climate risk: a toolkit

The Communicating Climate Risk toolkit is the result of interdisciplinary collaboration across the physical sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, incorporating input from policy and other stakeholders. It identifies key challenges in communicating climate science, both to support robust decision-making, and to inform wider societal shifts using effective climate storytelling. It offers lessons, recommendations, and tools to address these challenges. Topics covered include varying conceptions of uncertainty and risk, best practice in visualising uncertainty data, and constructive critique of AR6 WG1 SPM methodologies for communicating model uncertainty

The MSY concept in a multi-objective fisheries environment - Lessons from the North Sea

One of the most important goals in current fisheries management is to maintain or restore stocks above levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). However, it may not be feasible to achieve MSY simultaneously for multiple species because of trade-offs that result from interactions between species, mixed fisheries and the multiple objectives of stakeholders. The premise in this study is that MSY is a concept that needs adaptation, not wholesale replacement. The approach chosen to identify trade-offs and stakeholder preferences involved a process of consulting and discussing options with stakeholders as well as scenario modelling with bio-economic and multi-species models. It is difficult to intuitively anticipate the consequences of complex trade-offs and it is also complicated to address them from a political point of view. However, scenario modelling showed that the current approach of treating each stock separately and ignoring trade-offs may result in unacceptable ecosystem, economic or social effects in North Sea fisheries. Setting FMSY as a management target without any flexibility for compromises may lead to disappointment for some of the stakeholders. To treat FMSY no longer as a point estimate but rather as a “Pretty Good Yield” within sustainable ranges was seen as a promising way forward to avoid unacceptable outcomes when trying to fish all stocks simultaneously at FMSY. This study gives insights on how inclusive governance can help to reach consensus in difficult political processes, and how science can be used to make informed decisions inside a multi-dimensional trade-off space