Model ensemble emphasizes marine conservation challenges in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean with climate change
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Marine Reserves, such as Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) are heralded as key spatial structures to achieve climate-resilient oceans. Protecting vulnerable, marine habitats and species from human activities such as intensive fishing pressure or oil and gas extraction, can help build resilience to ever-pervasive climate change impacts. Whether such spatial marine conservation measures can fulfill that role depends on where those areas are placed, what their objectives are and, importantly, whether climate change is being considered or not.
Climate change can undermine the effectiveness of marine conservation measures; however, the integration of climate change into marine conservation planning and management is limited. To know where to direct focused efforts to integrate climate change in marine conservation measures, it is essential to understand how marine ecosystems might respond to future climate change. For example, locating areas of rapid or slower changes can be useful to plan a climate-resilient marine conservation network in a particular region. Here, short- and long-term projections of species-specific or ecosystem-level climate responses can inform marine conservation planning and management.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
We used an ensemble of nine marine ecosystem and two Earth system models that project standardized output of marine ecosystem responses for the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, including changes in the biomass of marine animals and changes in key environmental drivers such as water temperature, food availability, oxygen concentration and water pH. We identified climate change hotspots and refugia where the environmental drivers will most change or remain close to their current state by mid- or end-century; hence, where marine ecosystems may respond to those changing drivers more or less rapidly in relation to current and future marine conservation measures (MPAs and OECMs).
Our research revealed that no existing marine conservation areas in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean overlap with identified climate refugia. Most established MPAs and almost half of the established OECMs lie within climate hotspots. These results emphasize challenges for marine conservation planning and management in the study region given the climate change trajectory we are currently on. Notably, our research stresses the need to proactively integrate the impacts of climate change into marine conservation efforts and provides one tool to do begin that process today. Our results provide important long-term context for climate change adaptation and future proofing spatial marine conservation planning in Canada and the Northwest Atlantic region.
Read the paper — Applying ensemble ecosystem model projections to future-proof marine conservation planning in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean by Andrea Bryndum-Buchholz, Julia L. Blanchard, Marta Coll, Hubert Du Pontavice, Jason D. Everett, Jerome Guiet, Ryan F. Heneghan, Olivier Maury, Camilla Novaglio, Juliano Palacios-Abrantes, Colleen M. Petrik, Derek P. Tittensor, and Heike K. Lotze.
