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The Location and Protection Status of Earth's Diminishing Marine Wilderness
... The current global biodiversity crisis results from anthropogenic activities, particularly overexploitation, habitat modification, and climate change [1,2]. These activities impact 87-90 % of the global ocean surface [3,4] and marine defaunation rates are expected to rapidly intensify as human use of the oceans further industrialises [5]. Some marine species are more at risk than others due to extrinsic (e.g., selective harvesting or incidental catch) and intrinsic factors (e.g., low reproductive potential) [6,7]. ...
... With 36 % of ISRAs occurring in the high seas and no overlap with existing MPAs, these areas do not currently benefit from any area-based management. Habitats and ecosystems in the high seas are often overlooked and generally some of the least protected on Earth [4]. The identification of ISRAs in oceanic and/or areas beyond national jurisdiction has the potential to guide the design of large, offshore, dynamic, or mobile MPAs that can ensure shark protection requirements are met [60]. ...
... This has ensured protection is 'representative' of different habitats while countries inched closer to meeting their global targets [61]. This trend of designating oceanic MPAs within EEZs and in the high seas is likely to continue increasing due to political and ecological reasons [4]. Four transboundary MPAs encompassing high seas waters have already been established globally, including the Pelagos Sanctuary for marine mammals in the Mediterranean Sea [62,63]. ...
Global biodiversity targets require nations to designate 30 % of their marine waters as protected areas by 2030. Sharks, rays, and chimaeras (hereafter 'sharks') are key components of aquatic ecosystems; however, over a third are globally threatened with extinction. Across the Central and South American Pacific Ocean region, we (i) assessed trends in Marine Protected Area (MPA) expansion and extent across the 12 nations of the region; (ii) quantified the spatial overlap between MPAs and Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs); and (iii) evaluated the effectiveness of the current MPA governance structure at protecting sharks and their critical habitat. There has been a recent rapid increase in the establishment of MPAs with 90 % of current MPAs designated since 2010. Yet, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Honduras still protect less than 10 % of their waters. We find that ISRAs overlap with all MPAs by only 15.6 % and with no-take MPAs by 7.3 %. This raises concerns about the low level of protection afforded to critical shark habitats in the region. Of 182 MPAs identified, 41.8 % do not have a management plan, comprising 39.8 % of the total MPA surface area. Mexico, Costa Rica, and Colombia have relatively strong governance frameworks in place and, along with Panama, Honduras, and Ecuador, represent the highest overlap between MPAs and ISRAs. However, the contribution of the remaining six countries to shark protection via MPAs is low based on limited spatial overlap with ISRAs (<2 %). As countries mobilise to meet the 30×30 target, we propose considering ISRAs as a key component of spatial planning when designing new MPAs, designating existing partially protected areas as no-take zones, or reshaping the boundaries of existing MPAs.
... The persistence of these remote areas is of special scientific interest because they are important reservoirs of pre-industrial ecological processes and constitute enclaves for buffering and counteracting the effects of global change on the planet [14,33,72,73]. The integrity of ecosystem functions in Chilean Patagonia is strengthened by the large land area dedicated to parks and reserves, which cover 51% of the territory, equivalent to 71% of the total area protected in Chile [65]. ...
... To advance and overcome the current conservation situation in Chilean Patagonia, in the face of fragmented and competitive research and conservation schemes, in this chapter (see below we consider of high relevance the creation of an Interdisciplinary Center for Conservation in Chilean Patagonia, with a public-private orientation, and including the development of incentives for binational Chile-Argentina collaboration. The development of mechanisms to achieve an adequate balance between the protection of marine and terrestrial systems in Chilean Patagonia is both an opportunity and an important challenge that can also contribute to the global conservation proposal for the future of the oceans [33]. An integrated and inclusive sea-land-society conservation vision will allow anticipating new and growing challenges, such as the expansion of aquaculture, new mining interest in the ocean floor, the development of coastal renewable energy projects, the regional expansion of tourism, and the expansion of use rights and productive activities in coastal marine territories. ...
... • Incentives for Chile-Argentina binational collaboration in the conservation of Patagonia. Patagonia as a whole, with its eastern and western slopes, stands out globally for its numerous remote environments subject to reduced anthropogenic impacts [33]. This land and marine territory is currently exposed to different forces of accelerated global change (climate, oceanographic, fisheries, aquaculture, invasions of exotic species, tourism, overfishing), which may affect its eastern and western sides differently. ...
Chilean Patagonia is a globally outstanding region notable for the current extent of its protected areas, which account for 51% of the terrestrial area and 41% of coastal waters, even if not entirely in terms of effective management. The remoteness of many of its vast landscapes, some of which remain untransformed by humans, the value of its spectacular mountain and island settings for recreation and nature-based tourism, and its highly endemic biota make this region unique for nature protection. The chapters in this book document recent human impacts on Patagonian ecosystems, including the challenges posed by climate change, changing use of sea and land, invasive non-native species, increasing tourist visitation, and expansion of salmon farming. These chapters underscore the critical need of protecting the region's exceptional values, both for regional and global nature conservation efforts. Scientific interest in Chilean Patagonia has increased greatly over the last decades. Through a review of the literature, in this chapter, we discuss the state of knowledge of biodiversity and the conservation status of coastal, marine, and freshwater ecosystems in Chilean Patagonia. We identify important gaps in knowledge of the ancestral history of human occupation, the impact of present socioeconomic systems on Patagonian environments, the biodiversity and characterization of freshwater systems, and the interconnections of land–ocean-human systems. The review of the literature identifies promising avenues to advance in the prevention and mitigation of current and future human impacts on protected areas. It underscores the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches to bolster conservation, from the planning and implementation of marine and terrestrial protected areas to their ongoing management in Chilean Patagonia. Finally, we summarize specific recommendations based on the analysis of each type of ecosystem presented in the chapters of this book and propose overarching policy recommendations that aim to foster a comprehensive, integrated conservation perspective that considers the intricate connections between land, ocean, and human systems throughout the Chilean Patagonia region.
... Year 2021 Anthromes mapped for the past 12,000 years (3) 2020 Forest intactness metric (116) 2020 Ecological intactness metric (119) 2019 Map of Human Modi cation (77) 2018 Marine intact areas (121) 2018 Protect the last of the wild (155) 1995 Global discrimination of land cover types (32) 2002 The Human Footprint is published for the terrestrial realm (66) 2008 First global map of anthropogenic biomes is released (51) 2008 The marine Cumulative Human Pressure Index is released (82) 2010 Anthromes mapped for 1700 to 2000 (85) 2010 Multiple stressors quanti ed for human water security (83) 2016 Intact forest landscapes (50) ...
... In 2000, this approach was used to create the first high spatial resolution maps of human population density by disaggregating census unit mapping of population density using remotely sensed data on nighttime lights and other data (60). More recently, machine learning techniques have (60) US National Imagery and Mapping Agency released the digital chart of the world of major road, railroad, and utility networks, major airports, and populated places HYDE 1.0 rst gridded global population and land dataset introduced (58) First global digitized vegetation and landuse maps (28) U.S. Geological Survey, University of Nebraska -Lincoln and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy produced a 1 km resolution global land cover characteristics database (50) The rst human pressure mapping e ort, "The Human Footprint" is published for the terrestrial realm (66) Human pressure is mapped for the rst time across the marine realm to create the Cumulative Human Pressure Index (82) Characterization of terrestrial biomes based on global patterns of sustained, direct human interaction with ecosystems to delineate "anthromes" (51) Multiple stressors quanti ed that, for the rst time, considered human water security and biodiversity perspectives simultaneously (83) Identi cation of areas under low levels of industrial pressure in forests (50), the terrestrial realm (69), and marine realms (121) Terrestrial and marine cumulative human pressure maps are analyzed together for the rst time to get a measure of coastal region intactness (8) Release of the Global Human Modi cation map (77) Remote sensing: the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation Invasibility: the level of vulnerability of a habitat to invasions from outside species combined satellite imagery and census data to map individual buildings and create population maps at a striking ∼30 m resolution (61), roughly equivalent to other high-resolution global data products derived from EOS. Another example of international curation of social data is efforts to combine agricultural census data with remotely sensed land cover maps to delineate global pasture lands (62), which have been chronically difficult to separate from natural grasslands by EOS alone (63). ...
... The latest global assessment showed that most ecoregions have large areas with high HFP scores (74%) and just 6% of ecoregions are on improving trajectories. And although industrial influence mapping has been less advanced for marine and freshwater ecosystems, there have been efforts to map where large-scale human industrial influence has been limited across the marine realm (120,121). In a global assessment of what they labeled marine wilderness, Jones et al. (121) identified marine areas that have both very little impact from 15 anthropogenic stressors and a very low combined cumulative influence from these stressors, discovering that just 13% of the ocean-mostly the high seas-meets their proposed definition of wilderness. ...
As anthropogenic transformation of Earth's ecology accelerates, and its impacts on the sustainability of humanity and the rest of nature become more obvious, geographers and other researchers are leveraging an abundance of spatial data to map how industrialization is transforming the biosphere. This review examines the methodologies used to create such maps and how they have enhanced our understanding of how societies can abate biodiversity loss, mitigate climate change, and achieve global sustainability goals. Although there have been great advances over the past two decades in mapping industrial transformations of ecology across the planet, the field is still in its infancy. We outline future research directions to better understand anthropogenic transformation of the biosphere and the utility of integrating global maps of socioeconomic, ecological, biodiversity, and climate data to explore and inform potential pathways of human-driven social-ecological change.
... 'Natural' is less well defined for marine and freshwater, as human impacts may diffuse more broadly in water and be detectable farther afield, but with low impact, but the concept still applies (see Halpern et al. 2012, Jones et al. 2018. For rivers, a binary attribution of naturalness ('natural' vs. 'nonnatural') is generally not used but there are several continuous indices which rate individual river reaches using criteria based on major pressures. ...
... Estimates of degraded marine ecosystems also vary greatly: the percentage of stocks fished at biologically unsustainable levels was 34% in 2017 (FAO & INRAE 2020). A much stricter definition could be based on the observation that 87% of the ocean is sufficiently impacted by human influence that it should not be considered wilderness (Jones et al. 2018). ...
... Other estimates of wilderness area on land differ from this substantially (Riggio et al. 2020, see discussion in 'natural' definition). • Jones et al. (2018) estimated that about 13% of the ocean can be considered wilderness because it is sufficiently free of human influence. ...
... In contrast to the terrestrial PAs, the ocean was effectively protected due to restricted and relatively difficult access and the majority of the oceans have recently been opened to extractive practices (Kelleher, 1999;Kareiva, 2006). For example, industrial-scale fishing is now widespread and leaving only small fractions of the ocean unexploited (Jones et al., 2018;Palumbi, 2004;Kareiva, 2006). As a result, to conserve the marine biodiversity, significant progress has been made in establishing new PAs, however, challenges remain to achieve the objectives of reducing pollution towards a goal of a healthy ocean (Toonen et al., 2013;Jones et al., 2018;Wilhelm et al., 2014). ...
... For example, industrial-scale fishing is now widespread and leaving only small fractions of the ocean unexploited (Jones et al., 2018;Palumbi, 2004;Kareiva, 2006). As a result, to conserve the marine biodiversity, significant progress has been made in establishing new PAs, however, challenges remain to achieve the objectives of reducing pollution towards a goal of a healthy ocean (Toonen et al., 2013;Jones et al., 2018;Wilhelm et al., 2014). th The PA approach, which was developed in the 20 century has been widely recognised as one of the most important strategies for achieving conservation goals st (Shafer, 2015). ...
... However, in the 21 century, it appears that PA-based conservation approach has reached its practical and political limits (Coad et al., 2019;Shafer, 2015). Over the previous 1.5 centuries, the role of PAs was explored and expanded and both success and failures have been remarkable (Shafer, 2015;Kalamandeen and Gillson, 2007;Butchart et al., 2010;Watson et al., 2014;Jones et al., 2018). Most of the PAs were established for the primary goal of conservation and later sustainable growth and use of natural ecosystems, have now stretched to contribute towards livelihood, poverty reduction, national development with relatively less value for biodiversity conservation (Shafer, 2015). ...
A species' ecological significance remains same whether it is found inside or outside a protected area (PA) then why the PAs are the primary obligatory guarantor to maintain the biodiversity within their boundaries? Despite an increase in the number of PAs, connectivity is generally poor between and within the PAs, and over 60% are too small to support major ecologically important and migratory species and eventually biodiversity spills across the board. In fact, 40 to 80% of the globally threatened flagship mammals including snow leopard (Panthera uncia), tiger (Panthera tigris), lion (Panthera leo), leopard (Panthera pardus) and elephant (Elephas maximus) exist outside the PA network. In contrast to the terrestrial PAs, the ocean was effectively protected due to restricted and relatively difficult access and the majority of the oceans have recently been opened to extractive practices. For example, industrial-scale fishing is now widespread and leaving only small fractions of the ocean unexploited. As a result, to conserve the marine biodiversity, significant progress has been made in establishing new PAs, however, challenges remain to achieve the objectives of reducing pollution towards a goal of a healthy ocean.
... We present a global map of the protection status of floating kelp forest habitats, which allowed us to identify escalating climate change threats and important conservation gaps for kelp forest ecosystems globally. Although one nation and a few ecoregions are meeting current international protection targets 7 for kelp forests, many of these MPAs are in remote islands with low levels of exposure to contemporary and projected MHWs and few non-climatic threats 56 . When kelp forests in remote islands are excluded, less than 3% of kelp forests are inside highly restrictive MPAs-no-take marine reserves-the most effective type of MPA for conserving biodiversity 1,31 and for enhancing climate resilience 29,30,[35][36][37]39,42 . ...
... We found that although many ecoregions with potential climate refugia have all their kelp forests protected inside MPAs, the Southern Fjordlands of Chile and the Malvinas/ Falklands ecoregions have no protection and account for >40% of the global distribution of kelp forests. These ecoregions emerge as priority areas for global conservation of kelp forests, and efforts are needed to secure their effective protection and representation 56 before other non-climatic threats intensify and erode their resilience. ...
Kelp forests are one of the earth’s most productive ecosystems and are at great risk from climate change, yet little is known regarding their current conservation status and global future threats. Here, by combining a global remote sensing dataset of floating kelp forests with climate data and projections, we find that exposure to projected marine heatwaves will increase ~6 to ~16 times in the long term (2081–2100) compared to contemporary (2001–2020) exposure. While exposure will intensify across all regions, some southern hemisphere areas which have lower exposure to contemporary and projected marine heatwaves may provide climate refugia for floating kelp forests. Under these escalating threats, less than 3% of global floating kelp forests are currently within highly restrictive marine protected areas (MPAs), the most effective MPAs for protecting biodiversity. Our findings emphasize the urgent need to increase the global protection of floating kelp forests and set bolder climate adaptation goals.
... Conservación y restauración de la biodiversidad marina: hacia una política integrada E l alcance de los impactos humanos sobre los mares y océanos ha contribuido durante las últimas décadas a una profunda alteración de los patrones espacio temporales característicos de la biodiversidad marina. Diversos autores estiman que dichos impactos habrían alcanzado un 87-90 % de la superficie global de los océanos, induciendo una regresión de la abundancia piscícola de un 38 % con respecto a los años 70 del pasado siglo, y una disminución de más de dos tercios de determinados hábitats costeros y marinos, tales como praderas de algas y fanerógamas o manglares (Jones et al., 2018;Hutchings et al., 2010;Lotze et al., 2006). Una adecuada evaluación de esta crisis de biodiversidad marina resulta, por ello, indispensable como base para la toma de acciones que permitan mitigar o revertir las tendencias negativas identificadas durante los últimos años. ...
... Subdirector General de Biodiversidad Terrestre y Marina Conservación y restauración de la biodiversidad marina: hacia una política integrada E l alcance de los impactos humanos sobre los mares y océanos ha contribuido durante las últimas décadas a una profunda alteración de los patrones espacio temporales característicos de la biodiversidad marina. Diversos autores estiman que dichos impactos habrían alcanzado un 87-90 % de la superficie global de los océanos, induciendo una regresión de la abundancia piscícola de un 38 % con respecto a los años 70 del pasado siglo, y una disminución de más de dos tercios de determinados hábitats costeros y marinos, tales como praderas de algas y fanerógamas o manglares (Jones et al., 2018;Hutchings et al., 2010;Lotze et al., 2006). Una adecuada evaluación de esta crisis de biodiversidad marina resulta, por ello, indispensable como base para la toma de acciones que permitan mitigar o revertir las tendencias negativas identificadas durante los últimos años. ...
Conservación y restauración de la biodiversidad marina: hacia una política integrada E l alcance de los impactos humanos sobre los mares y océanos ha contribuido durante las úl-timas décadas a una profunda alteración de los patrones espacio temporales característicos de la biodiversidad marina. Diversos autores estiman que dichos impactos habrían alcanzado un 87-90 % de la su-perficie global de los océanos, induciendo una regresión de la abundancia piscícola de un 38 % con respecto a los años 70 del pasado siglo, y una disminución de más de dos tercios de determinados hábitats costeros y marinos, tales como praderas de algas y fanerógamas o manglares (Jones et al., 2018; Hutchings et al., 2010; Lotze et al., 2006). Una adecuada evaluación de esta crisis de biodiversidad marina resulta, por ello, indispensable como base para la toma de acciones que permitan mitigar o revertir las ten-dencias negativas identificadas durante los últimos años. Contexto legal y científico La relevancia dada en la agenda internacional a la conser-vación marina ha sido evidenciada por el contenido del Marco Mundial de Biodiversidad de Kunming-Montreal para 2030, aprobado durante la Conferencia de las Partes (COP) del Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CBD) en diciembre de 2022. En él, además de señalarse que la biodiversidad es fundamental para el bienestar humano, para la salud del planeta y para la prosperidad económica de todas las personas, se establecen diversos compromi-sos relacionados con la conservación de la biodiversidad marina. Por ejemplo, su meta 2 busca "Garantizar que para 2030 al menos un 30 % de las zonas de ecosistemas terrestres, de aguas continentales y costeros y marinos de-gradados estén siendo objeto de una restauración efectiva, con el fin de mejorar la biodiversidad y las funciones y los servicios de los ecosistemas y la integridad y conectividad ecológicas", mientras que su meta 3 se dirige a "Garan-tizar y hacer posible que, para 2030, al menos un 30 % de las zonas terrestres y de aguas continentales y de las zonas marinas y costeras, especialmente las zonas de particular importancia para la biodiversidad y las funciones y los servicios de los ecosistemas, se conserven y gestionen eficazmente mediante sistemas de áreas protegidas ecoló-gicamente representativos, bien conectados y gobernados equitativamente y otras medidas de conservación eficaces basadas en áreas (…)". Por su parte, el Objetivo de Desa-rrollo Sostenible (ODS) 14 define la necesidad de "Conser-var y utilizar sosteniblemente los océanos, los mares y los recursos marinos" (UNGA, 2015). Estos compromisos internacionales se encuentran plena-mente alineados, también en el ámbito marino, con lo re-cogido por la Estrategia 2030 de biodiversidad de la Unión Europea, que prevé un 30 % de áreas protegidas en el me-dio terrestre y un 30 % en el medio marino, y que un tercio de estas (10 %) sean de protección estricta, siguiendo las directrices que se acuerden para el conjunto de Estados miembros de la UE. En el contexto español, el Plan estra-tégico estatal del patrimonio natural y de la biodiversidad a 2030, aprobado a través del Real Decreto 1057/2022, de 27 de diciembre, y la propia Declaración del Gobierno ante la Emergencia Climática y Ambiental (2020) recogen objetivos análogos. Todos estos objetivos nacionales e internacionales se sus-tentan en el reconocimiento de la biodiversidad como un concepto amplio y de múltiples niveles, que incluiría ge-nes, especies, poblaciones, rasgos funcionales y ecosiste-mas, y vinculado con una comprensión creciente sobre las La abundancia piscícola se ha reducido un 38 % con respecto a los años 70 La biodiversidad marina es una manifestación de la salud de mares y océanos. Delfines en la costa de Almería
... The Southern Ocean is one of the most productive and wild marine regions on the planet and has been identified as an important area for conservation (Chown & Brooks, 2019;Jones et al., 2018). Despite relatively high ecological integrity (e.g., Halpern et al., 2015;Jones et al., 2018), the Southern Ocean was historically heavily exploited. ...
... The Southern Ocean is one of the most productive and wild marine regions on the planet and has been identified as an important area for conservation (Chown & Brooks, 2019;Jones et al., 2018). Despite relatively high ecological integrity (e.g., Halpern et al., 2015;Jones et al., 2018), the Southern Ocean was historically heavily exploited. Harvesting of Antarctic species began in the 1770s; extensive take of seals was followed by largescale whaling (Hofman, 2017). ...
Biodiversity is critical for maintaining ecosystem function but is threatened by increasing anthropogenic pressures. In the Southern Ocean, a highly biologically productive region containing many endemic species, proactive management is urgently needed to mitigate increasing pressures from fishing, climate change, and tourism. Site‐based conservation is one important tool for managing the negative impacts of human activities on ecosystems. The Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) Standard is a standardized framework used to define sites vital for the persistence of global biodiversity based on criteria and quantitative thresholds. We used tracking data from 14 species of Antarctic and subantarctic seabirds and pinnipeds from the publicly available Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) data set to define KBAs for a diverse suite of marine predators. We used track2kba, an R package that supports identification of KBAs from telemetry data through identification of highly used habitat areas and estimates of local abundance within sites. We compared abundance estimates at each site with thresholds for KBA criteria A1, B1, and D1 (related to globally threatened species, individual geographically restricted species, and demographic aggregations, respectively). We identified 30 potential KBAs for 13 species distributed throughout the Southern Ocean that were vital for each individual species, population, and life‐history stage for which they were determined. These areas were identified as highly used by these populations based on observational data and complement the ongoing habitat modeling and bioregionalization work that has been used to prioritize conservation areas in this region. Although further work is needed to identify potential KBAs based on additional current and future data sets, we highlight the benefits of utilizing KBAs as part of a holistic approach to marine conservation, given their significant value as a global conservation tool.
... Further, there are only two oMPAs in the high seas: in the Ross Sea (Antarctica) and in the North Atlantic Current and Evlanov Sea basin (NACES), Northeast Atlantic, although both comprise multiple areas. Oceanic environments, including those in the high seas, are thus some of the least protected on Earth [4] (Figure 1). ...
... studies suggest that oMPAs help reduce fishing pressures [1], though specific benefits to stocks are debated (see next section). Well-designed and enforced spatial management should reduce direct anthropogenic impacts and, together with the larger size of oMPAs, could help mitigate indirect threats by maintaining wilderness zones [4,23] and encompassing species' range shifts under climate change [13], though limited evidence for these benefits is provided in the studies. ...
Oceans beyond the continental shelf represent the largest yet least protected environments. The new agreement to increase protection targets to 30% by 2030 and the recent United Nations (UN) High Seas Treaty try to address this gap, and an increase in the declaration of oceanic Marine Protected Areas (oMPAs) in waters beyond 200 m in depth is likely. Here we find that there is contradictory evidence concerning the benefits of oMPAs in terms of protecting pelagic habitats , providing refuge for highly mobile species, and potential fisheries benefits. We discover a mismatch between oMPA management objectives focusing on protection of pelagic habitats and biodiversity, and scientific research focusing on fisheries benefits. We suggest that the solution is to harness emerging technologies to monitor inside and outside oMPAs.
... We further assessed whether habitats gained were farther from the coast than habitats lost. This approach is in keeping with current understanding concerning anthropogenic impacts disproportionately affecting coastal areas (Williams et al., 2021) compared with the open ocean (Jones et al., 2018). Sperm whales would meet the definition of a refugee species in the WIO context if distances to the coast of habitat gained in the modern model are greater than that of habitat lost in the historical model. ...
... Generally, such contractions are most pronounced where humans are most active, typically along highly settled coastlines or key fishing grounds . This spatially biased pattern of historical depletion has led to a global rarity of intact coastal ecosystems (Williams et al., 2021); most pristine marine ecosystems are restricted to the open ocean (Jones et al., 2018). Open-ocean waters in the WIO were not important sperm whale whaling grounds during the Yankee whaling era because most catch records were located coastally. ...
Many species are restricted to a marginal or suboptimal fraction of their historical range due to anthropogenic impacts, making it hard to interpret their ecological preferences from modern‐day data alone. However, inferring past ecological states is limited by the availability of robust data and biases in historical archives, posing a challenge for policy makers . To highlight how historical records can be used to understand the ecological requirements of threatened species and inform conservation, we investigated sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) distribution in the Western Indian Ocean. We assessed differences in information content and habitat suitability predictions based on whale occurrence data from Yankee whaling logs (1792–1912) and from modern cetacean surveys (1995–2020). We built maximum entropy habitat suitability models containing static (bathymetry‐derived) variables to compare models comprising historical‐only and modern‐only data. Using both historical and modern habitat suitability predictions we assessed marine protected area (MPA) placement by contrasting suitability in‐ and outside MPAs. The historical model predicted high habitat suitability in shelf and coastal regions near continents and islands, whereas the modern model predicted a less coastal distribution with high habitat suitability more restricted to areas of steep topography. The proportion of high habitat suitability inside versus outside MPAs was higher when applying the historical predictions than the modern predictions, suggesting that different marine spatial planning optimums can be reached from either data sources. Moreover, differences in relative habitat suitability predictions between eras were consistent with the historical depletion of sperm whales from coastal regions, which were easily accessed and targeted by whalers, resulting in a modern distribution limited more to steep continental margins and remote oceanic ridges. The use of historical data can provide important new insights and, through cautious interpretation, inform conservation planning and policy, for example, by identifying refugee species and regions of anticipated population recovery.
... Coral reefs are essential coastal structures, not only functioning as vital components of food webs and ecosystems but also providing natural physical barriers to storms and cyclones. This compounds the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and other anthropogenic effects on the oceans; 87% worldwide of coral reefs have some level of degradation (Jones et al., 2018) [20] . Plastic-related health damage to coral reefs contributes to their declining health in an already increasingly hostile environment. ...
... Coral reefs are essential coastal structures, not only functioning as vital components of food webs and ecosystems but also providing natural physical barriers to storms and cyclones. This compounds the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and other anthropogenic effects on the oceans; 87% worldwide of coral reefs have some level of degradation (Jones et al., 2018) [20] . Plastic-related health damage to coral reefs contributes to their declining health in an already increasingly hostile environment. ...
Plastic, one of the most preferred materials in today's industrial world is posing serious threat to environment and consumer's health in many direct and indirect ways. Exposure to harmful chemicals during manufacturing, leaching in the stored food items while using plastic packages or chewing of plastic tethers and toys by children are linked with severe adverse health outcomes such as cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption, developmental and reproductive effects, among others. Plastic pollution is one of the glitches at the epicenter of the challenges plaguing the universe status quo with more than estimated eighty million tons of plastic related wastes being released into the sea annually. This study identified the impacts of plastic pollution on public health in Nigeria. It further identified the need for plastic pollution education across various communities, cities and institutions in Nigeria. The study also recommended the innovative tools of poetry, music and educational blogs among others for use in plastic pollution education for sustainable development in Nigeria. It concluded with the clarion call for more intensive research on the impacts of plastic pollution on public health in Nigeria.
... While education and awareness approaches were not associated with recoveries in our global analysis, examples such as this highlight the efficacy of well-designed social interventions in rural and developing regions. In addition, ecosystem modification was linked with elevated extinction risk [8.9-fold increase; CI 1.7-84] and status decline [5.6-fold increase; CI 1.9-29] and hydrological changes (e.g., dam construction) were associated with declining status [4.0-fold increase; CI 1. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and with decreasing trend [4.5-fold increase; CI 1. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. These threats are particularly acute for fishes in Asia and Africa where construction of dams 56 and conversion of mangrove habitat 57 is accelerating. ...
... While education and awareness approaches were not associated with recoveries in our global analysis, examples such as this highlight the efficacy of well-designed social interventions in rural and developing regions. In addition, ecosystem modification was linked with elevated extinction risk [8.9-fold increase; CI 1.7-84] and status decline [5.6-fold increase; CI 1.9-29] and hydrological changes (e.g., dam construction) were associated with declining status [4.0-fold increase; CI 1. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and with decreasing trend [4.5-fold increase; CI 1. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. These threats are particularly acute for fishes in Asia and Africa where construction of dams 56 and conversion of mangrove habitat 57 is accelerating. ...
In the face of an accelerating extinction crisis, scientists must draw insights from successful conservation interventions to uncover promising strategies for reversing broader declines. Here, we synthesize cases of recovery from a list of 362 species of large carnivores, ecologically important species that function as terminal consumers in many ecological contexts. Large carnivores represent critical conservation targets that have experienced historical declines as a result of direct exploitation and habitat loss. We examine taxonomic and geographic variation in current extinction risk and recovery indices, identify conservation actions associated with positive outcomes, and reveal anthropogenic threats linked to ongoing declines. We find that fewer than 10% of global large carnivore populations are increasing, and only 12 species (3.3%) have experienced genuine improvement in extinction risk, mostly limited to recoveries among marine mammals. Recovery is associated with species legislation enacted at national and international levels, and with management of direct exploitation. Conversely, ongoing declines are robustly linked to threats that include habitat modification and human conflict. Applying lessons from cases of large carnivore recovery will be crucial for restoring intact ecosystems and maintaining the services they provide to humans.
... Additionally, climate change effects are already apparent and are projected to further accelerate this decline (Pörtner et al. 2023). Only 13% of all marine areas are free from intense effects of human activities, and there are very few unexploited coastal areas (Jones et al. 2018). The coastal zone maintains high biodiversity and productivity but faces simultaneously strong pressures from human activities both from land and at sea. ...
Marine biodiversity loss poses significant ecological and socio-economic challenges. This paper examines how coastal biodiversity loss is expressed and outlines implications for management. Synthesizing scientific literature on biodiversity change in the well-studied Finnish coastal waters (Baltic Sea) as a case study, we show that biodiversity loss occurs throughout the area in virtually all biotopes and organism groups examined. Biodiversity loss was expressed in 43 different ways. The three most common forms of biodiversity loss—local disappearance of species and decrease in abundance and biomass—covered nearly half of the observations. For these, the most common underlying causes were eutrophication, climate change, and physical disturbance of the seabed. Overall, eutrophication and climate change were the most frequent ones among the 13 loss drivers identified. We emphasize that critical knowledge gaps must be bridged, and monitoring improved, but, importantly, resolute decisions for action are required for the recovery of coastal marine ecosystems.
... Around 87% of the ocean is experiencing some level of human impact from things like fishing, climate change, industrialisation and pollution. While unaffected places still exist, most are in the remote ocean of the Southern Hemisphere (Jones et al. 2018). Ocean areas most affected by industrialisation (including shipping, offshore infrastructure like oil rigs and tourism) include Western Europe and North America, reflecting the high levels of urbanisation along the coasts of these locations (Stojanovic and Farmer 2013). ...
Key concepts for sustainability education:
• Human wellbeing and sustainable living require healthy, functioning ecosystems; intact
biodiversity; and equitable social, cultural, and economic systems.
• Our choices and actions are making both gradual and sudden changes to ecosystems
throughout the world.
• Human values, consumption, economies, science and technology and governance all
influence these choices.
• Climate change, land and sea use, pollution, over-exploitation and invasive species are
the key drivers of environmental change.
• These collective human activities are having significant and often irreversible damage to
biodiversity and ecosystems throughout the world.
• Human actions that create changes like these usually benefit some people while disad-
vantaging others, creating strong inequalities.
• Understanding natural biodiversity, from genes to ecosystems, and the tight connection
with human wellbeing is essential for effective sustainability education.
• We can secure a sustainable future, but it requires education and transformative change
to institutions, communities and individual behaviours.
... Around 87% of the ocean is experiencing some level of human impact from things like fishing, climate change, industrialisation and pollution. While unaffected places still exist, most are in the remote ocean of the Southern Hemisphere (Jones et al. 2018). Ocean areas most affected by industrialisation (including shipping, offshore infrastructure like oil rigs and tourism) include Western Europe and North America, reflecting the high levels of urbanisation along the coasts of these locations (Stojanovic and Farmer 2013). ...
... Coral reefs are crucial coastal structures that serve as natural physical barriers against storms and cyclones in addition to being important parts of food webs and ecosystems. According to Jones et al. (2018), 87% of coral reefs globally have some degree of degradation, which exacerbates the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and other human-caused effects on the oceans. Coral reefs' deteriorating health in an already hostile environment is exacerbated by plastic-related harm. ...
In many direct and indirect ways, plastic, one of the most popular materials in today's industrial world, is a major threat to the environment and the health of consumers. Cancers, birth defects, weakened immunity, endocrine disruption, developmental and reproductive effects, and other serious negative health outcomes are associated with exposure to hazardous chemicals during manufacturing, leaching in food items stored in plastic packaging, and children chewing plastic toys and tethers. With an estimated 80 million tons of plastic-related debris being dumped into the ocean each year, plastic pollution is one of the main problems affecting the status quo in the universe. The level of plastic pollution in Port Harcourt and its effects on public health were determined by this study. It also found that different towns and institutions in Port Harcourt needed to educate people about plastic pollution. Along with other creative techniques, the study suggested using poetry, music, and educational blogs to teach about plastic waste and promote sustainable development in Port Harcourt. The clear request for more thorough research on the effects of plastic waste on public health in Rivers State came at the end.
... Wilderness areas (WAs), as natural areas unmodified by humans [1,2], play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity [3][4][5], regulating climate [6], providing aesthetic value [7,8], and so on. Nevertheless, currently only 23.2% of the world's land WAs exist [9] as well as 13.2% of the marine WAs [10]. More importantly, WAs are disappearing rapidly. ...
Wilderness areas are important in maintaining biodiversity, and “retaining existing intact and wilderness areas” is listed as the first of 21 action targets for 2030 in the first draft of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. However, the quantity and quality of regional-scale wilderness mapping and identification of priority areas for conservation are still insufficient. Here, an approach integrating Boolean and Multi-Criteria Evaluation is used to conduct wilderness mapping, and priority conservation areas are identified based on ecosystem service values and the current status of wilderness protection in protected areas in the state-owned forest region of Daxing’anling. It is found that the wilderness areas account for 96.72% of the total area of the study area, of which high-quality wilderness areas constitute for 50.34% of the total area of wilderness areas, and the quality of wilderness is greatly affected by the railroads. Secondly, wilderness areas have higher ecosystem service values per square kilometer than non-wilderness areas, except for food supply service. In addition, 72.26% of the wilderness areas are not protected, and 52.26% of these high-quality wilderness areas with high ecosystem service values still have conservation gaps. This study can provide data support and scientific reference for future wilderness conservation works in different regions.
... We initially used two probability thresholds to define the range of the species: ≥0.5 and >0. While the former is considered standard practice and was adopted in several studies 14,[60][61][62][63] , the latter provides estimates that resemble the extent of occurrence represented by IUCN expert range maps 64 . Since our niche limit estimates are derived from geographic distribution data (see below), the threshold choice could affect our projections. ...
Climate change is exposing marine species to unsuitable temperatures while also creating new thermally suitable habitats of varying persistence. However, understanding how these different dynamics will unfold over time remains limited. We use yearly sea surface temperature projections to estimate temporal dynamics of thermal exposure (when temperature exceeds realised species’ thermal limits) and opportunity (when temperature at a previously unsuitable site becomes suitable) for 21,696 marine species globally until 2100. Thermal opportunities are projected to arise earlier and accumulate gradually, especially in temperate and polar regions. Thermal exposure increases later and occurs more abruptly, mainly in the tropics. Assemblages tend to show either high exposure or high opportunity, but seldom both. Strong emissions reductions reduce exposure around 100-fold whereas reductions in opportunities are halved. Globally, opportunities are projected to emerge faster than exposure until mid-century when exposure increases more rapidly under a high emissions scenario. Moreover, across emissions and dispersal scenarios, 76%-97% of opportunities are projected to persist until 2100. These results indicate thermal opportunities could be a major source of marine biodiversity change, especially in the near- and mid-term. Our work provides a framework for predicting where and when thermal changes will occur to guide monitoring efforts.
... At first, I intended to do spatial analyses of wilderness predefined by the Human Footprint mapping methodology (Sanderson et al., 2002;Venter et al., 2016;Woolmer et al., 2008) at global, regional and local scales (Inostroza et al., 2016;Jones et al., 2018;Williams et al., 2020). The aim was to: 1) map the extent to which an area was free from industrial pressure at higher resolutions than has been made available, 2) identify industrial threats to remaining wilderness, and 3) assess the risks of wilderness loss. ...
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) are counting on research, policy and practice to drive the paradigm shift needed to address the social and ecological threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and injustice. Despite global efforts to resolve these systemic challenges, the paradigm underpinning mainstream conservation research, policy and practice, is criticized as insufficient, marginalizing, and even oppressive - exacerbating the problems people are seeking to solve. ‘Biodiversity’, ‘conservation’, and ‘biodiversity conservation’ means different things to different people based on their distinctive worldview(s), knowledge(s) and value(s) - differences that are crucial to recognize and understand for any paradigm shift to be achievable in a way that is pluralistic, inclusive and equitable.
A paradigm is composed of a set of explicit premises and implicit assumptions that form a procedural model (e.g., theories, methodologies, postulates) used to process patterns of the world to describe realities. Paradigms can be distinguished by examining the underlying worldviews, knowledges and values from which they arise. In general terms, a worldview defines the essence of what is perceived to exist in the world and the nature of relations. Knowledge constitutes systems through which information, data, analysis and meaning is formed, to become embodied through a process of consensus. Values encompass the guiding codes-of-conduct that inform how judgements are made and weighed. Together, worldviews, knowledges and values generate paradigms of the world, how it is experienced, and how it works.
A paradigm shift from the dominant worldview, knowledge, and values - commonly referred to as ‘business-as-usual’ - has been cited by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as vital to conserve biological diversity for a sustainable future. A transformation from the business-as-usual paradigm requires the adoption of diverse worldviews, knowledges and values into conservation practices, while being pragmatic in negotiating (in)commensurabilities (i.e., measures of commonality/compatibility). The business-as-usual paradigm largely comprises a worldview that perceives reality existing as one globalized system, prioritizing objective knowledge, to realize values of individuality, freedom, and economic prosperity for all.
Relational principles sit in contrast to many aspects of business-as-usual paradigms. Relational principles assume that there are many, dynamic, realities intersubjectively defined by interconnected and interdependent relations, as demonstrated by an ethos of thinking-doing-being. For example, worldviews, knowledge and values based on relational principles are often upheld by Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), that acknowledge Mother Nature, place-based knowledge, kinship and reciprocity. IPLCs, with the GBF, IPBES, and others, are calling for relational principles to be applied to conservation research, policy and practice to assist in halting the perverse effects of the business-as-usual paradigm that threatens biodiversity and social-ecological systems. The rationale for their inclusion is the radically different paradigm of relations have been demonstrated over millenia to foster more sustainable social-ecological conditions. While increasingly recognized as crucial to research, policy and implementation, initiatives aimed at integrating relational principles into the conservation mainstream continue to fall short. This shortfall is indicative of gaps in understanding the fundamental assumptions between different worldviews, knowledge, and values that can be bridged using analytical philosophy.
Analytic philosophy approaches logic, language and ethics in a pragmatic way, using branches of philosophy such as ontology, epistemology and axiology, to methodically identify and contextualize the contents and meanings of a paradigm being expressed without altering them in the process. Metaphysical ontology examines the essence of what exists and the nature of entities, relations, space, and time. Epistemology theorizes the boundaries and body of knowledge by methodologies that delineate the justifiable limits of what is believed to be valid, known and knowable. Axiology brings into question the diversity and classification of values, the notion of worth, and the rules and consequences of judgements. Analytic philosophy seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms and patterns that dictate how relationships are made and change within and between ontology, epistemology, and axiology. This form of analysis provides insights into worldviews, knowledge and values being expressed by their underpinning logic, language, and ethic that together, formulate a paradigm. The ongoing lack of practical knowledge to identify, differentiate, and contextualize the principles underpinning paradigms, limits the capacity to shift paradigms as required to transform biodiversity conservation research, policy and practice.
This thesis applies analytical philosophy techniques to conceptually situate elements that correspond to particular worldviews, knowledge systems and values to develop practical frameworks that can be used to help identify and understand the similarities and differences between paradigms across research, policy and implementation in the context of biodiversity conservation. The frameworks developed through the research process were designed to enable more plural, inclusive and equitable practices, which are needed to improve biodiversity conservation. First, I considered the socio-political ‘landscape’ of global biodiversity conservation, with a focus on the roles of IPLCs (Chapter 1). Then, I spatially and conceptually considered the implications of Target 1 of the GBF Zero Draft that, at the time, was controversial in calling to retain all remaining “wilderness areas” (Chapter 2, Pérez-Hämmerle et al., 2021). Then, to further analyze the inclusivity of the CBD and GBF Drafts towards diverse worldviews, I co-developed a framework designed to more inclusively account for the language and structural approach of biodiversity conservation policy (Chapter 3, Moon and Pérez-Hämmerle, 2022). Building from the framework, real, relative and relational frames of the world were then conceptually situated across research, policy and implementation in the context of power to enable more plural, inclusive and equitable biodiversity conservation practices (Chapter 4, Pérez-Hämmerle et al. in review). I then continue by contextualizing the contributions of the empirical data collected over the course of the PhD that served to metamorphose the methodologies and methods used and inform the development of each Chapter (Chapter 5). The original works presented here provide essential reference points from which the transformative potential of biodiversity conservation research, policy and implementation can emerge. Reflecting on the process of how a paradigm changes through time, I analyzed my own paradigm shift as a researcher, based on principles of relationality, decolonization and diffractive analysis to examine the transformative potential that comes with re-evaluating ways of thinking-doing-being. In conclusion, this thesis shows the strengths and limitations of analytical philosophy as a pragmatic methodology to enhance plural, inclusive and equitable practices and that a paradigm shift across conservation research, policy and implementation must apply relational principles through a process of transformation (Chapter 6).
... As in terrestrial biomes, human pressure is pervasive throughout the marine environment (Halpern et al., 2008;Jones et al., 2018;Kroodsma et al., 2018;Sala & Knowlton, 2006). Over the last century, human activities-overfishing foremost among them-have increasingly impacted marine life, precipitating acute declines in biomass and diversity (Cardinale et al., 2012;Di Minin et al., 2019;Díaz et al., 2019;Jackson et al., 2001). ...
Aim
Human pressure in the oceans is pervasive and affects marine life. Understanding species' differing responses to human pressure, and how human pressure compares to other environmental variables in shaping marine communities is needed to facilitate the sustainable management of the seas. Despite theory and empirical evidence that fishing pressure affects marine life‐history strategies, several recent large‐scale studies have not shown strong relationships between fishing pressure and community composition. We aim to reconcile theory with data and explain these variable findings, testing the hypothesis that the signal of the effect of fishing pressure on marine communities depends on the scale at which the community is defined.
Location
North East Atlantic.
Time Period
2009 to 2021.
Major Taxa Studied
Marine vertebrates (Teleostei, Elasmobranchii, Petromyzonti, Holocephali).
Methods
We collate extensive scientific marine biodiversity surveys, published life‐history traits and high‐resolution annual fishing pressure data. Using frequentist Generalized Linear Mixed Models, we assess whether community mean weighted life‐history traits correlate with fishing pressure, sea surface temperature and depth and whether the strength of these relationships are scale dependant.
Results
We show fish community life‐history strategy correlates with fishing pressure, and the relative importance of fishing pressure compared to environmental variables increases with the scale at which a community is defined.
Main Conclusions
We suggest this scale dependence relates to the spatial extent over which covariates vary, and how fish movement moderates communities' experience of this variability. Our findings highlight the importance of explicit consideration of scale in ecological research, supporting the idea that studying systems at ecologically relevant scales is necessary to detect and appropriately interpret the effects of global change.
... For instance, large blooms of mysid shrimp have been documented covering numerous reefs (Figure 1a), resulting in ecological consequences for several species due to increased food availability. Such events Beyond COVID-19: ecotourism's role in ocean conservation targets Approximately 87% and 98% of the world's oceans have been impacted by human activities (Jones et al. 2018) and by multiple anthropogenic stressors (eg fishing, invasive species, climate change) (Halpern et al. 2015), respectively. Within this context, Olán-González et al. (2023) utilized the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown as a natural experiment to scrutinize the effects of ecotourism within Mexico's most successful, fully protected marine reserve: Cabo Pulmo National Park (CPNP). ...
... The carbon density of Canada's northern Arctic ecosystems ranges from 42.1 to 71.8 kg 63 C/m 2 63 . The Arctic Ocean represents one of the last remaining marine wilderness areas102 . In 2016, 20.2% of the terrestrial area and 4.7% of the marine area of the circumpolar Arctic was protected i 103 . ...
... The consensus of the top managers on the concept of green environmental protection can help the shipping companies to recognize the environmental problems that occur in the shipping process and make timely adjustments to the operational strategies to improve the financial and operational performance (Martin-Rojas et al., 2019). When economic and environmental goals are in conflict, viewing environmental goals as the primary interest reflects managers' deep understanding of and practical response to marine environmental protection (Jones et al., 2018). The higher the managers' recognition and response to green marine supply chain management, the greater their willingness to engage in environmental protection behaviors, thus highlighting the competitive advantage of the companies and promoting their sustainable development. ...
The frequency increased in international marine trade has caused serious damage to the marine environment and put forward new requirements for the sustainable development of the marine supply chain. Previous studies have examined the effectiveness of marine supply chain management from the single perspective of government, shipping companies or stakeholders, but few studies have focused on the systematic impact of managers' empathy on management. In order to further explore the mechanism of marine supply chain managers' empathic response to marine environmental protection, this study analyses the three major steps involved in the management. This study confirms that policy formulation, "technology-behavior" practices, and stakeholder conflict balance have a positive impact on the improvement of organizational performance in shipping companies, and that empathic responses of managers plays a significant moderating role. This study reflects managers' pro-environment behavior of ocean and practical thinking of "based on policy system, supported by technical behavior, and guaranteed by mitigating conflicts", presents the managers' empathic response under the external influence of policy, internal influence of shipping company itself and process influence of stakeholders, outlining the mechanism of managers' multiple empathic effect in the face of the green marine supply chain. The above three elements co-exist in the cognition and emotion of unified management, systematically revealing managers' psychological performance of managers' empathy in each stage of the supply chain. This study also creatively proposes a mechanism of empathic response, initiates new ideas about marine environmental management, and highlights the important value of empathic response in promoting the synergistic development of economic and marine ecological benefits.
... In addition to land-use change, which is estimated to affect at least 75% of land areas (Venter et al., 2016), the marine domain is also under anthropogenic pressure, leaving only ~13% of the ocean in wilderness, mostly on the high seas (Jones et al., 2018), with the Mediterranean Sea being one of the areas in the world subject to very high impact due to human activities (Halpern et al., 2015). ...
The Gulf of Trieste, is a shallow semi‐enclosed sea of about 500 km ² in the north‐eastern part of the Adriatic Sea. The coastal and marine areas of the Italian region Friuli Venezia Giulia, which borders most of the Gulf of Trieste, are subject to significant pressure from human activities, especially in terms of maritime traffic, ports, industry, fishing and tourism. But they are also characterised by natural areas of high environmental value. We wanted to understand the human impact on these coastal and marine areas in order to better inform sustainable management.
To carry out the analysis, we collected a range of anthropogenic (human) and environmental data, from which we produced a series of indicator maps. By combining the various indicators, we created two subsequent maps: the seabed vulnerability map and the marine environment vulnerability map in the area as a whole. The analysis has highlighted areas with different degrees of environmental vulnerability due to human development and identified the most critical areas in the Gulf of Trieste with high anthropogenic pressure. Both maps show that human impacts affect large areas of the seabed and marine environment, while those with minimal or non‐existent impacts are very limited and are related mainly to areas with high levels of existing protection and conservation.
The seabed vulnerability map shows that the biggest problems are related to discharge of dredging sludge, mollusc fishing with dredgers and turbo blowers, and anchoring boats. Furthermore, the presence of anthropogenic elements on the seabed can damage the natural environment and even permanently alter the natural shape and structure of the seabed. The marine environment vulnerability map shows that ports, urbanisation, industrial activities, maritime traffic and fishing pressure affect the entire study area.
The vulnerability maps are a useful analytical tool to identify the most critical areas where possible actions can be planned to maintain a healthy and sustainable productive marine environment and to manage and resolve the conflicts between economic development and environmental health.
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
... Biodiversity in oceanic ecosystems is poorly characterized and under threat from multiple human activities and fragmented global ocean governance (Jones et al., 2018;Crespo et al., 2019). Top predators, such as whales and dolphins (cetaceans) are no exception and may also act as valuable indicators of high oceanographic or biological diversity (Findlay et al., 1992;Azzellino et al., 2014;Di Tullio et al., 2016). ...
Cetaceans in the eastern South Atlantic Ocean are poorly studied. We present results from a 2 week ship-based survey from Cape Town to Vema Seamount (980 km to the west) during October–November 2019, including visual and towed-hydrophone observations from the vessel, and 10 days of acoustic monitoring on the seamount. Fifty-two hours of visual surveys resulted in 39 encounters of whale groups including seven of humpback, six of fin and one sei whale, as well as four unidentified baleen whales, 18 unidentified balaenopterid whales and four unidentified odontocetes. Two humpback whales at the seamount were engaged in possible feeding behaviour. A large aggregation of mostly fin whales was observed near the continental shelf edge (22 encounters over a 70 × 50 km ² area, six fin, one sei whale, 15 not confirmed to species), an historic whaling ground for both fin and sei whales. Towed-hydrophone data (78.7 h) detected five groups of sperm whales, 45 of delphinids, one beaked whale and no Kogiids. Acoustic data from the seamount detected calls from several baleen whale species including humpback whale non-song calls, Antarctic minke ‘bioduck’ calls, sei whale down-sweep calls and a likely Bryde's whale call. Two call types could not be assigned to species, including the most detected – a simple frequency-modulated call with peak power around 130 Hz. This study contributes to an improved understanding of cetacean occurrence in the eastern South Atlantic Ocean and highlights the need for more research to improve identification of cetacean vocalizations in the region.
... Globally, 90% of the world's fisheries are either fully exploited (61%) or overexploited (29%) (FAO 2020) and a mere 13.2% of the ocean can be considered to have intact ecosystems with low impact from human pressures (Jones et al. 2018). Up to a third of catches, worth up to $23 billion, are illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) (FAO 2021). ...
Science is clear in showing that we are facing two existential challenges: a climate emergency and a species extinction crisis. These challenges are rooted in the extractive and linear economic model we have globally adopted, in which economic development is intertwined with the destruction of nature. Europe has recently responded politically by adopting the European Green Deal with a set of policies aimed at transforming the EU economy envisaging a future with no net carbon emissions and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use. Despite the dire state of the ocean and the urgency to implement effective solutions, we continue to witness the loss of nature and, with it, the loss of current and future economic and social value. Marine protected areas (MPAs) are one of the most effective solutions to address these challenges. There is, however, the need to clarify what these area-based management tools are, how they can provide benefits, what conditions must be met to ensure they are effective, and how a strategy can be adopted to increase the breadth, speed and success of efficient MPAs to save what is left in the ocean, allow ecosystems to recover, and build sustainable jobs and economic growth.
... Biogenic habitats which are important conservation features like those formed by algae, molluscs, and corals play are important ecosystem-based adaptation for human settlements and infrastructures along coasts and play important roles in stabilising shorelines from sediment loss (Grabowski et al., 2012), protecting against storms , creating nursery habitats for marine organisms (Powers et al., 2007;Lefcheck et al., 2019), and capturing and sequestering carbon (Zhang et al., 2017). These processes are highly dependent on intact marine ecosystems Heithaus et al., 2012;Jones et al., 2018;Saunder et al., 2020), making protection of the marine environment paramount in adapting and mitigating future environmental risks. ...
Problems of climate change and marine conservation occur across many aspects of social-ecological systems. Addressing these challenges requires the use of interdisciplinary research techniques. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a common mechanism to support marine conservation and livelihoods but are often created without regard to climate change impacts. Understanding how climate change will impact MPAs, how existing MPAs can be modified considering climate, and where current institutional practices enable climate change adaptation are all needed to support future seas.
Meta-analysis of available experimental work examining European benthic organism responses to ocean acidification and warming suggests that calcifying organisms are likely to experience decreases in growth, reproductive capacity, and survival. Meta-analysis also shows European fleshy algae are resilient to end of century projected conditions. Underlying MPA ecological conditions are therefore likely to change based on current emission pathways.
Examination of UK MPA case studies shows that existing conservation mechanisms can be adjusted to enhance resilience to climate change in marine social-ecological systems. Ways to achieve this include adopting adaptive management approaches, ecosystem-based management approaches, enhanced recognition of climate change in primary legislation used to support MPAs, and improved site monitoring.
Doctrinal analysis of key conservation legislation supporting English MPAs and semi-structured interviews with individual’s familiar using said legislation reveals that there is large scope for adaptive governance in response to climate change in inshore waters. Current legislation has supported ecosystem-based management approaches and large-scale habitat restoration efforts. However, practical capacity issues of insufficient resourcing for key marine governance organisations prevents effective monitoring of MPAs, researching challenges within inshore regions, and enforcing conservation agreements.
... The GoC is nested in one of the most extensive, environmentally intact regions (e.g. low human footprint) in the world (Jones et al., 2018;Stuart-Smith et al., 2013;Venter et al., 2016). It is a large (~370,000 km 2 ) and relatively shallow (~60 m average depth) semi-enclosed sea in northern Australia, defined by the 'u-shaped' land boundary of the Queensland and Northern Territory coastlines, and a northern border approximately between the Wessel Islands and Cape York (Patterson, 2019) (Fig. 1). ...
... Human activities have increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide CO2 by 36% and the pH of ocean surface waters has already declined, The CO2 taken up by the ocean decreases the pH and concentration of carbonate ions, leads to a combination of chemical changes collectively known as ocean acidification. The effect of elevated CO2 results in decline of calcification rates in corals [2,3,10,16] . ...
... This broad range of morphologies was selected to be indicative of the diversity of mushroom corals in general within this location. Additionally, the reefs of this study region are very isolated and considered 'wilderness' due to the absence of any direct human disturbance (Jones et al. 2018). We can therefore use this remote site to investigate the typical annual rate of mushroom coral movement and survival within a low-energy, sloped environment with no confounding anthropogenic factors. ...
Mushroom corals can play an important role in tropical reef ecosystems by providing habitat and performing important ecological functions. Unlike most stony corals, free-living mushroom corals can move, both passively and actively, and can use this ability to escape competition or harmful environments. However, as their movement is typically slow, occurs over relatively small scales, and is traditionally hard to measure, their movement ecology is little researched. Nevertheless, quantitative geospatial data on species’ movement, distribution, survival, and interaction can improve mechanistic modelling of community dynamics in various environments. We use ‘structure from motion’ photogrammetry to track 51 individual corals’ 3D movement and survival over one year within an isolated and enclosed lagoon. This technique essentially provides a large-scale quantitative community time-lapse and allows detailed individual level life-history data to be collected over spatial and temporal scales that were previously impractical.
... Rogers et al. (2020). Overall, the area of the ocean remaining with no discernible human impact has been estimated at 3% (Halpern et al., 2015) whilst that which can be classified as wilderness (low human impacts) has been estimated at 13% ( Jones et al., 2018a). An estimated 66% of the ocean is suffering increasing human impacts (Halpern et al., 2015). ...
We review the current knowledge of the biodiversity of the ocean as well as the levels of decline and threat for species and habitats. The lack of understanding of the distribution of life in the ocean is identified as a significant barrier to restoring its biodiversity and health. We explore why the science of taxonomy has failed to deliver knowledge of what species are present in the ocean, how they are distributed and how they are responding to global and regional to local anthropogenic pressures. This failure prevents nations from meeting their international commitments to conserve marine biodiversity with the results that investment in taxonomy has declined in many countries. We explore a range of new technologies and approaches for discovery of marine species and their detection and monitoring. These include: imaging methods, molecular approaches, active and passive acoustics, the use of interconnected databases and citizen science. Whilst no one method is suitable for discovering or detecting all groups of organisms many are complementary and have been combined to give a more complete picture of biodiversity in marine ecosystems. We conclude that integrated approaches represent the best way forwards for accelerating species discovery, description and biodiversity assessment. Examples of integrated taxonomic approaches are identified from terrestrial ecosystems. Such integrated taxonomic approaches require the adoption of cybertaxonomy approaches and will be boosted by new autonomous sampling platforms and development of machine-speed exchange of digital information between databases.
... The extended Southern Ocean (south of 40 • S, see Section 2.1) is characterized by unique environments and fauna, the latter often adapted to extreme environmental conditions . It contains the highest percentage of wilderness (88.5 %), among all ocean realms (Jones et al., 2018) and influences global climate (Rintoul, 2018). Nonetheless, Southern Ocean ecosystems are increasingly under pressure from climate change and human use. ...
Multiple initiatives have called for large-scale representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs). MPAs should be ecologically representative to be effective, but in large, remote regions this can be difficult to quantify and assess. We present a novel bioregionalization for the Southern Ocean, which uses the modelled circumpolar habitat importance of 17 marine bird and mammal species. The habitat-use of these predators indicates biodiversity patterns that require representation in Southern Ocean conservation and management planning. In the predator habitat importance predictions, we identified 17 statistical clusters, falling into four larger groups. We characterized and contrasted these clusters based on their predator, prey and oceanographic characteristics. Under the existing Southern Ocean MPA network, some clusters fall short of 10 % representation, yet others meet or exceed these targets. Implementation of currently proposed MPAs can in some cases contribute to meeting even 30 % spatial coverage conservation targets. However, the effectiveness of mixed-use versus no-take MPAs should be taken into consideration, since some clusters are not adequately represented by no-take MPAs. These results, combined with previous studies in the Southern Ocean, can help inform the continued design, implementation, and evaluation of a representative system of MPAs for Southern Ocean conservation and management.
... Although many of the Aichi Targets are concerned with areas outside of protected areas, very little attention has been given to the 83 percent and 90 percent of undesignated terrestrial and marine areas, respectively. This is despite the significant biodiversity and ecosystem services they harbor and provide, which if lost would be an unmitigated disaster for both nature and people (Jones et al., 2018a;Maron et al., 2018). ...
Over fifty years of global conservation has failed to bend the curve of biodiversity loss, so we need to transform the ways we govern biodiversity. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity aims to develop and implement a transformative framework for the coming decades. However, the question of what transformative biodiversity governance entails and how it can be implemented is complex. This book argues that transformative biodiversity governance means prioritizing ecocentric, compassionate and just sustainable development. This involves implementing five governance approaches - integrative, inclusive, adaptive, transdisciplinary and anticipatory governance - in conjunction and focused on the underlying causes of biodiversity loss and unsustainability. Transforming Biodiversity Governance is an invaluable source for academics, policy makers and practitioners working in biodiversity and sustainability governance. This is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
... F I G U R E 5 Scoping potential offset sites in Mozambique. (a) Assessing ecosystems that will be impacted by the proposed development plan; (b) mapping the extent of impacted ecosystems in Mozambique; (c) using human footprint data to map degraded land where restoration offsets may deliver biodiversity gains; and (d) scoping offset sites by identifying potentially degraded areas of impacted ecosystems, and overlaying priority offset areas such as protected areas and Key Biodiversity Areas 6 | CONCLUSION Despite widespread recognition of the need to halt biodiversity loss (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2014), transformation of the natural world continues to occur at a rapid pace (Jones, Klein, et al., 2018;Venter et al., 2016). As governments pursue ambitious international development goals (United Nations General Assembly, 2015), and will soon adopt a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework likely to contain ambitious biodiversity conservation targets (e.g., protect 30% of Earth's land by 2030), the need to balance development and conservation goals is ever growing. ...
Human activities such as urbanization, infrastructure and agriculture are driving global biodiversity declines. In an attempt to balance economic development goals with biodiversity conservation, governments and industry apply a decision‐making framework known as the mitigation hierarchy, with a goal of achieving no net loss or net gain outcomes for biodiversity. Successful application of the mitigation hierarchy requires biodiversity assessments and spatial planning to inform the design of mitigation policies, identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation and impact avoidance, assess the biodiversity impacts of developments, and identify appropriate mitigation measures including offsetting residual impacts. However, guidance on the necessary data and assessment techniques is often lacking, especially in countries where formal mitigation policies do not exist or are in their infancy. Here, we discuss and demonstrate analyses that can help answer some key questions for formulating effective mitigation policies and applying the mitigation hierarchy. We focus on data and analyses that can inform the avoidance and offset steps in particular, and demonstrate these techniques using a case study in Mozambique. While these analyses will not replace field‐based assessments for projects, they offer rapid, low‐cost approaches to support scoping and development of mitigation policy, planning and decision‐making, especially in relatively data‐poor regions.
... The notion that wilderness can encompass places within the ocean and coastal waters is relatively new in Western traditions and is yet coming to be a more common assumption (Barr, 2001;Jones et al., 2018). We can draw on the idea that wilderness includes not only geophysical characteristics of an environment but also forms a touchstone for human perceptions of nature and freedom. ...
In Western thought and literature, a terrestrial bias is considered a phenomenological primacy for notions such as wilderness. This ecocritical review draws on nineteenth-century South Seas literature with its influences from frontierism and the literary movements of romanticism, realism and naturism to consider a more fluid appreciation and reconceptualisation of wilderness as non-terrestrial and an oceanic touchstone for freedom. American terrestrial frontierism, that drove colonial settlement of the North American continent, is used as both counterpoint and important embarkation point for ventures into the Pacific Ocean following ‘fulfilment’ of the ‘manifest destiny’ to overspread the continent. For American, British and Australian writers, the Pacific represented an opportunity to apply literary techniques to capture new encounters. South Seas works by Melville, Stevenson, Becke and Conrad offer glimpses of seascapes that provide perceptions of heterotopias, archetypes and depictions of dispossessed itinerants at a moral frontier and wilderness that is both sublime and liberating, liminal and phenomenological.
... Aware of the detrimental effects of anthropogenic degradation, Abbey warns that if human beings persist on displacing nature's wild spaces for cities, freeways, and resource exploitation, earth's few remaining wilderness areas could vanish in decades. Abbey's discourse foretells the impact of the Anthropocene in which that 77% of the earth has been altered by human activities (Allan et al., 2017;Guo et al., 2010;Jones et al., 2018;Watson et al., 2018). He acknowledges how Americans possess myriad liberties, yet strongly admonishes against the excessive development of open spaces. ...
More than 50 years have passed since Edward Abbey published Desert Solitaire—his persuasive tribute to the preservation of wilderness and wildlife, and over 30 years since he penned. In Praise of Mountain Lions: Original Praises (1984), Abbey predicted how hyper-urbanization and anthropogenic stressors would lead to habitat fragmentation and to an extinction vortex among mountain lion populations. In this essay, I engage in an interdisciplinary approach employing Edward Abbey’s esthetic theory, political ideologies, and polemic land ethic to examine the urgent plight of mountain lions struggling to survive today in the Santa Monica Mountains. It is my hope that the synthesis of Edward Abbey’s political admonitions will contribute to the emerging body of interdisciplinary environmental literary criticism and research to advocate for the protection of mountain lions in urbanized landscapes.
[report in Finnish, summary available in English at https://luontopaneeli.fi/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/finnish-nature-panel-publications-1a-2024-marine-biodiversity-loss.pdf].
Tällä raportilla täytetään tietopuutteita matalien rannikkoalueiden vedenalaisen luonnon osalta. Raportti perustuu olemassa oleviin tutkimustietoihin rannikon vedenalaisen meriluonnon muutoksista ja muutosten aiheuttajista. Raportin alussa aihealuetta taustoitetaan ensin Suomen rannikkoalueiden yleisten ominaisuuksien ja luonnolle paineita aiheuttavan ihmistoiminnan osalta sekä luonnon monimuotoisuuden ja luonnon ihmisille tuottamien arvojen näkökulmasta.
Knowing the total number of species in a region has been a question of great interest motivated by the need to provide a reference point for current and future losses of biodiversity. Unfortunately, obtaining an accurate number is constrained by the fact that most species remain to be discovered, due to the imperfect detection of species in the field collection or because of temporal turnover in species composition. Here, to understand the inventory completeness at the local scale, we studied the temporal dynamics in the species richness and composition of bryophytes in Tianmushan National Nature Reserve. We used β‐diversity to measure the temporal variation and analyzed the species attributes of newly discovered species collected this time. Furthermore, we evaluated our sampling strategy to measure sampling effect and estimated the species that remain to be discovered. We found that total β‐diversity was largely driven by turnover. The analysis of species attributes showed that epiphytic species dominate the newly recorded species in both the narrow and wide elevational range species. Further, if only one of the methods was adopted, 26%–29% of the newly discovered species would be missed, and we inferred that there are likely are 185 bryophytes yet to be discovered. Our results indicate that when the same effort was made, an appropriate sampling methodology is crucial to accelerate newly recorded species discovery. Further, the results of our study highlight that species temporal turnover should be considered when assessing the completeness of species inventories at the local scale.
Microplastics (MPs) are a distinct threat to marine ecosystems and biodiversity, but there is a serious lack of assessment of risks posed by MPs to global hotspots of marine biodiversity. To assess the threat of marine MP contamination to global marine biodiversity, we identified priority conservation areas under high MP stress (density > 105 km2) by integrating distribution data on global surface marine MPs with geographic data on three categories of hotspot areas for marine protection, namely Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs), and seamounts. Then, their social and natural influences were analyzed. A total of 1814 MPAs (5.8 million km2), 58 EBSAs, and 5125 seamounts under high MP stress were identified. In the sea areas under national jurisdiction, the proportion of MPAs under high MP stress showed a quadratic relationship with the country's GDP per capita, reaching a maximum at a GDP per capita of around $45,000, and a positive correlation with the population size and density of the country where they are located. On the high seas, a total of 12 EBSAs and 49 shallow and mid-depth seamounts under high MP stress were identified, which implied that these areas should be recognized as a priority for conservation in the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) framework. This study provides an actionable reference for the subsequent incorporation of MP stress into a global, BBNJ-framework pathway for high seas protection.
Agriculture and Food Science Book series aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to publish their experiences and research results on all aspects of Agriculture and Food Science. It also provides a premier interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the fields of Agriculture and Food Science. High quality research contributions describing original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, or theoretical work in all areas of Agriculture and Food Science are cordially invited for publication.
Kelp forests are one of the earth's most productive ecosystems and are at the greatest risk from climate change, yet little is known regarding their future threats and current conservation status. By combining a global remote sensing dataset of floating kelp forests with climate data and projections, we find that exposure to projected marine heatwaves will increase ~8 times compared to contemporary (2001-2020) exposure for intermediate climate scenarios. While exposure will intensify for all forests, climate refugia emerge for some southern hemisphere kelp forests, which have lower exposure to contemporary and projected marine heatwaves. Under these escalating threats, less than 3% of global kelp forests are currently within highly restrictive marine protected areas, the most effective conservation measure for providing climate resilience. Our findings emphasize the urgent need to increase the global protection of kelp forests and set bolder climate adaptation goals.
An examination of the boundaries between the domestic and the wild in terms of the landscape of Israel and the Hebrew Bible. The book explores the Hebrew Bible with respect to plant and animal life, while offering a rare ecological perspective and including modern concerns such as the human ecological footprint.
For too long and with ever‐increasing ferocity during the past decades of an exponentially growing human world population, humankind has been waging a genuine war against nature, of which we ourselves are nevertheless also a part. We are plundering the unique biological treasure, the diversity of species, without which the ecosystems we rely on for our food, our water and so much more would not function. At present, we are already in the midst of a massive decline of populations and species, with a significantly higher extinction rate than the long‐term average. Driven essentially by habitat loss and degradation, direct exploitation through legal and illegal hunting and fishing as well as pesticides and pollution, within decades, 1 million species out of a total of 8 million could go extinct. Alongside climate change, this dramatic decay of biodiversity, that involves also the subsequent loss of ecosystem services, here termed ‘the end of evolution’, is another and by no means lesser threat to humanity. We can still take countermeasures, but we must transform our economy and change our way of living. As most successful strategy the protection of up to 30% of Earth's surface by 2030 was suggested, ideally based on the implementation of a consistent framework of global ecosystems, as it was agreed on by the December 2022 United Nations Conference of Parties (COP15) Montreal meeting for the Conservation on Biological Diversity.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are key to averting continued loss of species and ecosystem services in our oceans, but concerns around economic trade-offs hamper progress. Here we provide optimized planning scenarios for global MPA networks that secure species habitat while minimizing impacts on fisheries revenues. We found that MPA coverage requirements differ vastly among nations, and that two-thirds of nations benefit economically from a collaborative approach. Immediate global protection of marine biodiversity habitat comes with losses of ~19% of total fisheries revenues, but international cooperation in concert with high seas protection improves economic losses for most countries, safeguards all species, and could save ~5B USD annually worldwide. Nations and fishery economies both share benefits from a coordinated approach to conserving marine biodiversity, with direct relevance to current international policies.
Extreme weather events are among the most critical aspects of climate change, but our understanding of their impacts on biological populations remains limited. Here, we exploit the rare opportunity provided by the avail- ability of concurrent longitudinal demographic data on two neighbouring marine top predator populations (the black-browed albatross, Thalassarche melanophris, breeding in two nearby colonies) hit by an exceptionally violent storm during one study year. The aim of this study is to quantify the demo- graphic impacts of extreme events on albatrosses and test the hypothesis that extreme events would synchronously decrease survival rates of neighbour- ing populations. Using demographic modelling we found that, contrary to our expectation, the storm affected the survival of albatrosses from only one of the two colonies, more than doubling the annual mortality rate com- pared to the study average. Furthermore, the effects of storms on adult survival would lead to substantial population declines (up to 2% per year) under simulated scenarios of increased storm frequencies. We, therefore, conclude that extreme events can result in very different local-scale impacts on sympatric populations. Crucially, by driving demographic asynchrony, extreme events can hamper our understanding of the demographic responses of wild populations to mean, long-term shifts in climate.
As with other fields of international law addressing human‐nature relations, the Anthropocene invites the reappraisal and reimagining of the law of the sea, the primary normative framework through which states regulate access to, and the use of, the global ocean. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) effected a major shift in global ocean governance towards a public order of the seas. However, the law of the sea remains substantially tethered to a Holocene conception of the ocean as a stable environmental domain of extractive exploitation and jurisdictional demarcation. This is illustrated by the confined scope of negotiations on a new implementing agreement under UNCLOS on the conservation and use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. Additionally, there has been limited acknowledgment of the multiple sites at which ocean governance in the Anthropocene takes place, in particular the central role of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It is contended that one way forward for addressing both these conceptual constraints and the UNCLOS and UNFCCC regime coordination challenges is the adoption of global ocean governance goals informed by the ‘Planetary Boundaries’ framework.
Les nouvelles ères géologiques ne sont pas si fréquentes et malheureusement, le début de l’Anthropocène, que les scientifiques placent en général autour de la première révolution industrielle1, n’est pas à l’avantage d’Homo sapiens sapiens (dont la traduction pourrait être « Homme intelligent »). Nous n’avons peut-être jamais aussi mal porté notre nom car ce sont nos actes (ou notre absence d’action) qui ont abouti à un bouleversement des écosystèmes sans précédent, conduisant à l’entrée dans cette nouvelle ère géologique. Les rapports scientifiques rassemblant et synthétisant des milliers d’études de par le monde sur l’impact de l’Homme dans les changements globaux sont alarmants depuis des décennies. Malgré notre prise de conscience et les avertissements clairs des scientifiques et des citoyens, les actions restent encore insuffisantes et ne parviennent pas pour le moment à stopper ou même ralentir la 6ème extinction majeure de biodiversité. Ceci a d’ailleurs abouti à accorder le titre de « patrimoine naturel » à différents composants environnementaux qui nous entourent.
Since the commercial exploitation of marine oil and gas reserves began in the middle of the twentieth century, extensive networks of offshore infrastructure have been installed globally. Many of the structures are now nearing the end of their operational lives and will soon require decommissioning, generating renewed interest in their environmental impacts and in the ecological consequences of their removal. However, such work requires selection of a subsample of assets for surveying; censuses of the entire ‘population’ in any given jurisdiction are practically impossible due to their sheer number. It is important, therefore, that the selected sample is sufficiently representative of the population to draw generalized conclusions. Here, a formal clustering methodology, partitioning around medoids, was used to produce a typology of surface-piercing oil and gas platforms in the North Sea. The variables used for clustering were hydrocarbon product, operational state, platform design and material, and substructure weight. Assessing intra-cluster variability identified 13 clusters as the optimum number. The most important distinguishing variable was platform type, isolating floating platforms first, then concrete gravity-based and then fixed steel. Following clustering, a geographic trend was evident, with oil production more prevalent in the north and gas in the south. The typology allows a representative subset of North Sea oil and gas platforms to be selected when designing a survey, or an assessment of the representativeness of a previously selected subset of platforms. This will facilitate the efficient use of the limited funding available for such studies.
More than half the fish in the sea
As the human population has grown in recent decades, our dependence on ocean-supplied protein has rapidly increased. Kroodsma et al. took advantage of the automatic identification system installed on all industrial fishing vessels to map and quantify fishing efforts across the world (see the Perspective by Poloczanska). More than half of the world's oceans are subject to industrial-scale harvest, spanning an area four times that covered by terrestrial agriculture. Furthermore, fishing efforts seem not to depend on economic or environmental drivers, but rather social and political schedules. Thus, more active measures will likely be needed to ensure sustainable use of ocean resources.
Science , this issue p. 904 ; see also p. 864
Wilderness areas are ecologically intact landscapes predominantly free of human uses, especially industrial scale activities, which result in significant biophysical disturbance. This definition does not exclude indigenous peoples and local communities who live in wilderness areas, depending on them for subsistence, and who have developed deep bio-cultural connections. Wilderness areas are important for biodiversity conservation, along with sustaining key ecological processes, and ecosystem services that underpin planetary life-support systems. Despite these widely recognized benefits and values they are insufficiently protected and are consequently being rapidly eroded. There are increasing calls for multilateral environmental agreements to make a greater and more systematic contribution to wilderness conservation before it is too late. We developed updated global maps of terrestrial wilderness and assessed wilderness coverage by the World Heritage Convention, one of the most important international conservation instruments. We found that one quarter of Natural and Mixed World Heritage Sites (WHS) contain wilderness, conserving a total of 545,307 km(2) (approximately 1.8% of the world's wilderness extent). Many WHS had excellent wilderness coverage such as the Okavango Delta in Botswana (11,914 km(2) ) and the Central Suriname Nature Reserve in Suriname (16,029 km(2) ). However, 22 (35%) of the world's terrestrial biorealms do not have any wilderness representation within WHS. As an efficient means of filling these gaps, we identify 840 protected areas > 500 km(2) in size which are predominantly wilderness (>50% of their area) and represent 18 of these 22 missing biorealms. These offer a starting point for assessing the potential for the designation of new WHS that could help increase wilderness representation on the World Heritage List. We also urge the World Heritage Convention to help ensure that the ecological integrity and Outstanding Universal Value of existing World Heritage Sites with wilderness values is preserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Global fisheries landings data from a range of public sources was harmonised and mapped to 30-min spatial cells based on the distribution of the reported taxa and the fishing fleets involved. This data was extended to include the associated fishing gear used, as well as estimates of illegal, unregulated and unreported catch (IUU) and discards at sea. Expressed as catch rates, these results also separated small-scale fisheries from other fishing operations. The dataset covers 1950 to 2014 inclusive. Mapped catch allows study of the impacts of fisheries on habitats and fauna, on overlap with the diets of marine birds and mammals, and on the related use of fuels and release of greenhouse gases. The fine-scale spatial data can be aggregated to the exclusive economic zone claims of countries and will allow study of the value of landed marine products to their economies and food security, and to those of their trading partners.
Humans have altered terrestrial ecosystems for millennia [1], yet wilderness areas still remain as vital refugia where natural ecological and evolutionary processes operate with minimal human disturbance [2-4], underpinning key regional- and planetary-scale functions [5, 6]. Despite the myriad values of wilderness areas-as critical strongholds for endangered biodiversity [7], for carbon storage and sequestration [8], for buffering and regulating local climates [9], and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalized communities [10]-they are almost entirely ignored in multilateral environmental agreements. This is because they are assumed to be relatively free from threatening processes and therefore are not a priority for conservation efforts [11, 12]. Here we challenge this assertion using new comparable maps of global wilderness following methods established in the original "last of the wild" analysis [13] to examine the change in extent since the early 1990s. We demonstrate alarming losses comprising one-tenth (3.3 million km(2)) of global wilderness areas over the last two decades, particularly in the Amazon (30%) and central Africa (14%). We assess increases in the protection of wilderness over the same time frame and show that these efforts are failing to keep pace with the rate of wilderness loss, which is nearly double the rate of protection. Our findings underscore an immediate need for international policies to recognize the vital values of wilderness and the unprecedented threats they face and to underscore urgent large-scale, multifaceted actions needed to maintain them.
Although marine reserves represent one of the most effective management responses to human impacts, their capacity to sustain the same diversity of species, functional roles and biomass of reef fishes as wilderness areas remains questionable, in particular in regions with deep and long-lasting human footprints. Here we show that fish functional diversity and biomass of top predators are significantly higher on coral reefs located at more than 20 h travel time from the main market compared with even the oldest (38 years old), largest (17,500 ha) and most restrictive (no entry) marine reserve in New Caledonia (SouthWestern Pacific). We further demonstrate that wilderness areas support unique ecological values with no equivalency as one gets closer to humans, even in large and well-managed marine reserves. Wilderness areas may therefore serve as benchmarks for management effectiveness and act as the last refuges for the most vulnerable functional roles.
Humans are adapting to climate change, but often in ways that further compound our effects on nature, and in turn the impact of climate change on us.
The first international goal for establishing marine protected areas (MPAs) to conserve the ocean's biodiversity was set in 2002. Since 2006, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has driven MPA establishment, with 193 parties committed to protecting >10% of marine environments globally by 2020, especially 'areas of particular importance for biodiversity' (Aichi target 11). This has resulted in nearly 10 million km 2 of new MPAs, a growth of ∼360% in a decade. Unlike on land, it is not known how well protected areas capture marine biodiversity, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of existing MPAs and future protection requirements. We assess the overlap of global MPAs with the ranges of 17,348 marine species (fishes, mammals, invertebrates), and find that 97.4% of species have <10% of their ranges represented in stricter conservation classes. Almost all (99.8%) of the very poorly represented species (<2% coverage) are found within exclusive economic zones, suggesting an important role for particular nations to better protect biodiversity. Our results offer strategic guidance on where MPAs should be placed to support the CBD's overall goal to avert biodiversity loss. Achieving this goal is imperative for nature and humanity, as people depend on biodiversity for important and valuable services.
Human pressures on the ocean are thought to be increasing globally, yet we know little about their patterns of cumulative change, which pressures are most responsible for change, and which places are experiencing the greatest increases. Managers and policymakers require such information to make strategic decisions and monitor progress towards management objectives. Here we calculate and map recent change over 5 years in cumulative impacts to marine ecosystems globally from fishing, climate change, and ocean- and land-based stressors. Nearly 66% of the ocean and 77% of national jurisdictions show increased human impact, driven mostly by climate change pressures. Five percent of the ocean is heavily impacted with increasing pressures, requiring management attention. Ten percent has very low impact with decreasing pressures. Our results provide large-scale guidance about where to prioritize management efforts and affirm the importance of addressing climate change to maintain and improve the condition of marine ecosystems.
We conducted an analysis of global forest cover to reveal that 70% of remaining forest is within 1 km of the forest’s edge, subject to the degrading effects of fragmentation. A synthesis of fragmentation experiments spanning multiple biomes and scales, five continents, and 35 years demonstrates that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13 to 75% and impairs key ecosystem functions by decreasing biomass and altering nutrient cycles. Effects are greatest in the smallest and most isolated fragments, and they magnify with the passage of time. These findings indicate an urgent need for conservation and restoration measures to improve landscape connectivity, which will reduce extinction rates and help maintain ecosystem services.
Governments have committed to conserving ≥17% of terrestrial and ≥10% of marine environments globally, especially “areas of particular importance for biodiversity” through “ecologically representative” Protected Area (PA) systems or other “area-based conservation measures,” while individual countries have committed to conserve 3–50% of their land area. We estimate that PAs currently cover 14.6% of terrestrial and 2.8% of marine extent, but 59–68% of ecoregions, 77–78% of important sites for biodiversity, and 57% of 25,380 species have inadequate coverage. The existing 19.7 million km2 terrestrial PA network needs only 3.3 million km2 to be added to achieve 17% terrestrial coverage. However, it would require nearly doubling to achieve, cost-efficiently, coverage targets for all countries, ecoregions, important sites, and species. Poorer countries have the largest relative shortfalls. Such extensive and rapid expansion of formal PAs is unlikely to be achievable. Greater focus is therefore needed on alternative approaches, including community- and privately managed sites and other effective area-based conservation measures.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
In recent decades, many marine populations have experienced major declines in abundance, but we still know little about where management interventions may help protect the highest levels of marine biodiversity. We used modeled spatial distribution data for nearly 12,500 species to quantify global patterns of species richness and two measures of endemism. By combining these data with spatial information on cumulative human impacts, we identified priority areas where marine biodiversity is most and least impacted by human activities, both within Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ). Our analyses highlighted places that are both accepted priorities for marine conservation like the Coral Triangle, as well as less well-known locations in the southwest Indian Ocean, western Pacific Ocean, Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, and within semi-enclosed seas like the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. Within highly impacted priority areas, climate and fishing were the biggest stressors. Although new priorities may arise as we continue to improve marine species range datasets, results from this work are an essential first step in guiding limited resources to regions where investment could best sustain marine biodiversity.
We show that the distributions of both exploited and nonexploited North Sea fishes have responded markedly to recent increases
in sea temperature, with nearly two-thirds of species shifting in mean latitude or depth or both over 25 years. For species
with northerly or southerly range margins in the North Sea, half have shown boundary shifts with warming, and all but one
shifted northward. Species with shifting distributions have faster life cycles and smaller body sizes than nonshifting species.
Further temperature rises are likely to have profound impacts on commercial fisheries through continued shifts in distribution
and alterations in community interactions.
Species richness has dominated our view of global biodiversity patterns for centuries. The dominance of this paradigm is reflected in the focus by ecologists and conservation managers on richness and associated occurrence-based measures for understanding drivers of broad-scale diversity patterns and as a biological basis for management. However, this is changing rapidly, as it is now recognized that not only the number of species but the species present, their phenotypes and the number of individuals of each species are critical in determining the nature and strength of the relationships between species diversity and a range of ecological functions (such as biomass production and nutrient cycling). Integrating these measures should provide a more relevant representation of global biodiversity patterns in terms of ecological functions than that provided by simple species counts. Here we provide comparisons of a traditional global biodiversity distribution measure based on richness with metrics that incorporate species abundances and functional traits. We use data from standardized quantitative surveys of 2,473 marine reef fish species at 1,844 sites, spanning 133 degrees of latitude from all ocean basins, to identify new diversity hotspots in some temperate regions and the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. These relate to high diversity of functional traits amongst individuals in the community (calculated using Rao's Q), and differ from previously reported patterns in functional diversity and richness for terrestrial animals, which emphasize species-rich tropical regions only. There is a global trend for greater evenness in the number of individuals of each species, across the reef fish species observed at sites ('community evenness'), at higher latitudes. This contributes to the distribution of functional diversity hotspots and contrasts with well-known latitudinal gradients in richness. Our findings suggest that the contribution of species diversity to a range of ecosystem functions varies over large scales, and imply that in tropical regions, which have higher numbers of species, each species contributes proportionally less to community-level ecological processes on average than species in temperate regions. Metrics of ecological function usefully complement metrics of species diversity in conservation management, including when identifying planning priorities and when tracking changes to biodiversity values.
Connectivity across the seascape is expected to have profound consequences for the behavior, growth, survival, and spatial
distribution of marine species. A landscape ecology approach offers great utility for studying ecological connectivity in
tropical marine seascapes. Landscape ecology provides a well developed conceptual and operational framework for addressing
complex multi-scale questions regarding the influence of spatial patterning on ecological processes. Landscape ecology can
provide quantitative and spatially explicit information at scales relevant to resource management decision making. It will
allow us to begin asking key questions such as ‘how much habitat to protect?’, ‘What type of habitat to protect?’, and ‘Which
seascape patterns provide optimal, suboptimal, or dysfunctional connectivity for mobile marine organisms?’. While landscape
ecology is increasingly being applied to tropical marine seascapes, few studies have dealt explicitly with the issue of connectivity.
Herein, we examine the application of landscape ecology to better understand ecological connectivity in tropical marine ecosystems
by: (1) reviewing landscape ecology concepts, (2) discussing the landscape ecology methods and tools available for evaluating
connectivity, (3) examining data needs and obstacles, (4) reviewing lessons learned from terrestrial landscape ecology and
from coral reef ecology studies, and (5) discussing the implications of ecological connectivity for resource management. Several
recent studies conducted in coral reef ecosystems demonstrate the powerful utility of landscape ecology approaches for improving
our understanding of ecological connectivity and applying results to make more informed decisions for conservation planning.
KeywordsSeascape ecology–Landscape ecology–Connectivity–Spatial scale–Pattern metrics–Fish
Recent research has highlighted the valuable role that coastal and marine ecosystems play in sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2). The carbon (C) sequestered in vegetated coastal ecosystems, specifically mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and salt marshes, has been termed "blue carbon". Although their global area is one to two orders of magnitude smaller than that of terrestrial forests, the contribution of vegetated coastal habitats per unit area to long-term C sequestration is much greater, in part because of their efficiency in trapping suspended matter and associated organic C during tidal inundation. Despite the value of mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and salt marshes in sequestering C, and the other goods and services they provide, these systems are being lost at critical rates and action is urgently needed to prevent further degradation and loss. Recognition of the C sequestration value of vegetated coastal ecosystems provides a strong argument for their protection and restoration; however, it is necessary to improve scientific understanding of the underlying mechanisms that control C sequestration in these ecosystems. Here, we identify key areas of uncertainty and specific actions needed to address them.
Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation efforts and now cover nearly 13% of the world's land surface, with the world's governments committed to expand this to 17%. However, as biodiversity continues to decline, the effectiveness of PAs in reducing the extinction risk of species remains largely untested. We analyzed PA coverage and trends in species' extinction risk at globally significant sites for conserving birds (10,993 Important Bird Areas, IBAs) and highly threatened vertebrates and conifers (588 Alliance for Zero Extinction sites, AZEs) (referred to collectively hereafter as 'important sites'). Species occurring in important sites with greater PA coverage experienced smaller increases in extinction risk over recent decades: the increase was half as large for bird species with>50% of the IBAs at which they occur completely covered by PAs, and a third lower for birds, mammals and amphibians restricted to protected AZEs (compared with unprotected or partially protected sites). Globally, half of the important sites for biodiversity conservation remain unprotected (49% of IBAs, 51% of AZEs). While PA coverage of important sites has increased over time, the proportion of PA area covering important sites, as opposed to less important land, has declined (by 0.45-1.14% annually since 1950 for IBAs and 0.79-1.49% annually for AZEs). Thus, while appropriately located PAs may slow the rate at which species are driven towards extinction, recent PA network expansion has under-represented important sites. We conclude that better targeted expansion of PA networks would help to improve biodiversity trends.
Coral reefs have exceptional biodiversity, support the livelihoods of millions of people, and are threatened by multiple human activities on land (e.g. farming) and in the sea (e.g. overfishing). Most conservation efforts occur at local scales and, when effective, can increase the resilience of coral reefs to global threats such as climate change (e.g. warming water and ocean acidification). Limited resources for conservation require that we efficiently prioritize where and how to best sustain coral reef ecosystems.
Here we develop the first prioritization approach that can guide regional-scale conservation investments in land- and sea-based conservation actions that cost-effectively mitigate threats to coral reefs, and apply it to the Coral Triangle, an area of significant global attention and funding. Using information on threats to marine ecosystems, effectiveness of management actions at abating threats, and the management and opportunity costs of actions, we calculate the rate of return on investment in two conservation actions in sixteen ecoregions. We discover that marine conservation almost always trumps terrestrial conservation within any ecoregion, but terrestrial conservation in one ecoregion can be a better investment than marine conservation in another. We show how these results could be used to allocate a limited budget for conservation and compare them to priorities based on individual criteria.
Previous prioritization approaches do not consider both land and sea-based threats or the socioeconomic costs of conserving coral reefs. A simple and transparent approach like ours is essential to support effective coral reef conservation decisions in a large and diverse region like the Coral Triangle, but can be applied at any scale and to other marine ecosystems.
Resilience is usually defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbance without shifting to an alternative state and losing function and services [1]–[3]. The concept therefore encompasses two separate processes: resistance—the magnitude of disturbance that causes a change in structure—and recovery—the speed of return to the original structure [4],[5]—which are fundamentally different but rarely distinguished. Yet, resilience has become a central concept in the management of natural ecosystems [6],[7]. Many current management actions aim to alleviate local stressors in an effort to increase ecosystem resilience to global climate change [8],[9]. Such a management philosophy is premised on the belief that eliminating local drivers of ecological change will increase the ability of an ecosystem to resist future climate disturbances, its ability to recover from such disturbances, or both [2],[6]. Measuring resilience is fraught with difficulties [1],[3]. Nevertheless, assessing changes in resilience as a result of management action is critical because there is general agreement for the existence of a strong link between resilience and sustainability [10]. Successfully increasing the resilience of natural systems may therefore have important implications for human welfare in the face of global climate change.
In this Perspective, we will argue that the expectation of increased resilience of natural communities to climate change through the reduction of local stressors may be fundamentally incorrect, and that resilience-focused management may, in fact, result in greater vulnerability to climate impacts. We illustrate our argument using coral reefs as a model. Coral reefs are in an ecological crisis due to climate change and the ever-increasing magnitude of human impacts on these biodiverse habitats [11],[12]. These impacts stem from a multiplicity of local stressors, such as fishing, eutrophication, and sedimentation. It is therefore not surprising that the concept of resilience—to climate change in particular—is perhaps more strongly advocated as an underpinning of management for coral reefs than for any other ecosystem [9],. Marine reserves or no-take areas, the most popular form of spatial management for coral reef conservation, are widely thought to have the potential to increase coral reef resilience [11],[13],[14],[17]. But do they really?
In 2002, world leaders committed, through the Convention on Biological Diversity, to achieve a significant reduction in the
rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. We compiled 31 indicators to report on progress toward this target. Most indicators of
the state of biodiversity (covering species’ population trends, extinction risk, habitat extent and condition, and community
composition) showed declines, with no significant recent reductions in rate, whereas indicators of pressures on biodiversity
(including resource consumption, invasive alien species, nitrogen pollution, overexploitation, and climate change impacts)
showed increases. Despite some local successes and increasing responses (including extent and biodiversity coverage of protected
areas, sustainable forest management, policy responses to invasive alien species, and biodiversity-related aid), the rate
of biodiversity loss does not appear to be slowing.
Coral bleaching, during which corals lose their symbiotic dinoflagellates, typically corresponds with periods of intense heat stress, and appears to be increasing in frequency and geographic extent as the climate warms. A fundamental question in coral reef ecology is whether chronic local stress reduces coral resistance and resilience from episodic stress such as bleaching, or alternatively promotes acclimatization, potentially increasing resistance and resilience. Here we show that following a major bleaching event, Montastraea faveolata coral growth rates at sites with higher local anthropogenic stressors remained suppressed for at least 8 years, while coral growth rates at sites with lower stress recovered in 2-3 years. Instead of promoting acclimatization, our data indicate that background stress reduces coral fitness and resilience to episodic events. We also suggest that reducing chronic stress through local coral reef management efforts may increase coral resilience to global climate change.
Illegal and unreported fishing contributes to overexploitation of fish stocks and is a hindrance to the recovery of fish populations and ecosystems. This study is the first to undertake a world-wide analysis of illegal and unreported fishing. Reviewing the situation in 54 countries and on the high seas, we estimate that lower and upper estimates of the total value of current illegal and unreported fishing losses worldwide are between 23.5 bn annually, representing between 11 and 26 million tonnes. Our data are of sufficient resolution to detect regional differences in the level and trend of illegal fishing over the last 20 years, and we can report a significant correlation between governance and the level of illegal fishing. Developing countries are most at risk from illegal fishing, with total estimated catches in West Africa being 40% higher than reported catches. Such levels of exploitation severely hamper the sustainable management of marine ecosystems. Although there have been some successes in reducing the level of illegal fishing in some areas, these developments are relatively recent and follow growing international focus on the problem. This paper provides the baseline against which successful action to curb illegal fishing can be judged.
Human pressure threatens many species and ecosystems, so conservation efforts necessarily prioritize saving them. However, conservation should clearly be proactive wherever possible. In this article, we assess the biodiversity conservation value, and specifically the irreplaceability in terms of species endemism, of those of the planet's ecosystems that remain intact. We find that 24 wilderness areas, all > or = 1 million hectares, are > or = 70% intact and have human densities of less than or equal to five people per km2. This wilderness covers 44% of all land but is inhabited by only 3% of people. Given this sparse population, wilderness conservation is cost-effective, especially if ecosystem service value is incorporated. Soberingly, however, most wilderness is not speciose: only 18% of plants and 10% of terrestrial vertebrates are endemic to individual wildernesses, the majority restricted to Amazonia, Congo, New Guinea, the Miombo-Mopane woodlands, and the North American deserts. Global conservation strategy must target these five wildernesses while continuing to prioritize threatened biodiversity hotspots.
Recent investigations suggest that biodiversity loss might impair the functioning and sustainability of ecosystems. Although deep-sea ecosystems are the most extensive on Earth, represent the largest reservoir of biomass, and host a large proportion of undiscovered biodiversity, the data needed to evaluate the consequences of biodiversity loss on the ocean floor are completely lacking.
Here, we present a global-scale study based on 116 deep-sea sites that relates benthic biodiversity to several independent indicators of ecosystem functioning and efficiency. We show that deep-sea ecosystem functioning is exponentially related to deep-sea biodiversity and that ecosystem efficiency is also exponentially linked to functional biodiversity. These results suggest that a higher biodiversity supports higher rates of ecosystem processes and an increased efficiency with which these processes are performed. The exponential relationships presented here, being consistent across a wide range of deep-sea ecosystems, suggest that mutually positive functional interactions (ecological facilitation) can be common in the largest biome of our biosphere.
Our results suggest that a biodiversity loss in deep-sea ecosystems might be associated with exponential reductions of their functions. Because the deep sea plays a key role in ecological and biogeochemical processes at a global scale, this study provides scientific evidence that the conservation of deep-sea biodiversity is a priority for a sustainable functioning of the worlds' oceans.
The management and conservation of the world's oceans require synthesis of spatial data on the distribution and intensity of human activities and the overlap of their impacts on marine ecosystems. We developed an ecosystem-specific, multiscale spatial model to synthesize 17 global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change for 20 marine ecosystems. Our analysis indicates that no area is unaffected by human influence and that a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by multiple drivers. However, large areas of relatively little human impact remain, particularly near the poles. The analytical process and resulting maps provide flexible tools for regional and global efforts to allocate conservation resources; to implement ecosystem-based management; and to inform marine spatial planning, education, and basic research.
As the summer minimum in Arctic sea ice cover reduces in area year by year due to anthropogenic global climate change, so interest grows in the untapped oil, gas and fisheries resources that were previously concealed beneath. We show that existing marine protected areas in the Arctic Ocean offer little or no protection to many habitats and deep seafloor features that coincide spatially with areas likely to be of interest to industry. These habitats are globally unique, hosting Arctic species within pristine environments that are currently undergoing rapid adjustment to climate-induced changes in ocean dynamics, species migration and primary production. They are invaluable as reference points for conservation monitoring and assessment. The existing Arctic marine protected area network needs to be expanded in order to protect these habitats and be fully coordinated with other spatial and non-spatial measures intended to protect Arctic habitats and ensure any uses of Arctic marine or subsea resources are sustainable.
During 2015-2016, record temperatures triggered a pan-tropical episode of coral bleaching, the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s. Here we examine how and why the severity of recurrent major bleaching events has varied at multiple scales, using aerial and underwater surveys of Australian reefs combined with satellite-derived sea surface temperatures. The distinctive geographic footprints of recurrent bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002 and 2016 were determined by the spatial pattern of sea temperatures in each year. Water quality and fishing pressure had minimal effect on the unprecedented bleaching in 2016, suggesting that local protection of reefs affords little or no resistance to extreme heat. Similarly, past exposure to bleaching in 1998 and 2002 did not lessen the severity of bleaching in 2016. Consequently, immediate global action to curb future warming is essential to secure a future for coral reefs.
The production performance of the global offshore has been remarkable, and still has not reached its full potential. Offshore fields represent 41% of the total oil discovered and are located in several regions albeit in few geological settings. Also, based in a heuristic approach, there could easily be 30% more oil than what is currently estimated. The ultimately recoverable reserves (URR) for the global offshore are close to 1 trillion bbl. Based on the cumulative number of exploration wells drilled and oil discovered offshore, there is still large undiscovered potential as several regions remain underexplored and others have not been explored at all.
Knowing where and how seafood is caught or farmed is central to empowering consumers, and the importers that supply them, with informed choices. Given the wide-ranging, complex and at times commercially sensitive nature of global seafood trade, it can prove very challenging to link imported seafood with information about its provenance. The databases involved are incomplete, at times vague and not harmonized. Here, we present a first attempt to link all global seafood imports through a virtual marketplace to exports and map their origins. Considerable work remains to ground-truth the specific origins of all seafood commodities. We illustrate the flow of seafood and its evolution since the 1970s when supporting records began. This work allows the impact of fishing or marine farming to be associated with seafood imports.
The Aichi Biodiversity Targets were designed to promote and implement the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) by providing a framework for action to save biodiversity and enhance its benefits for people. Specifically, Target 11 aims to protect 10% of all seas by 2020. The percentage of the world's oceans that are protected has increased steadily in recent years, mainly due to very large marine protected areas (MPAs).
The issue of making major gains in achieving protection targets through ‘going big’ has brought added scrutiny to the subject of MPAs. There is economy in scale, but several people have called into question whether going large will protect representative habitat and result in true protection, or whether it is merely a politically expedient way for some nations to attain targets by creating paper parks, while avoiding tough conservation decisions.
The recent creation of large MPAs has greatly enhanced the chance of achieving global protection targets. Large areas typically contain several ecosystems and habitats that interact ecologically, and allow for more holistic conservation. The interactions between ecosystems in large MPAs occur without many of the problems associated with networks of smaller MPAs, where the connectivity between sites is often affected by human activities.
The disadvantages of large MPAs include difficulties of surveillance, enforcement and monitoring of vast offshore areas, as well as high total costs. While the cost per unit area may be lower for large MPAs, conducting surveillance and monitoring in such vast areas requires much more expensive technologies.
Large MPAs complement and add to existing management and conservation measures. Decision makers should consider designating them as one of a suite of possible protection measures. Besides greatly enhancing the chance of reaching agreed biodiversity targets, large MPAs improve the quality of conservation.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Deep-sea ecosystems represent Earth's major ecological research frontier. Focusing on seafloor ecosystems, we demonstrate how new technologies underpin discoveries that challenge major ecological hypotheses and paradigms, illuminating new deep-sea geosphere-biosphere interactions. We now recognize greater habitat complexity, new ecological interactions and the importance of 'dark energy', and chemosynthetic production in fuelling biodiversity. We also acknowledge functional hotspots that contradict a food-poor, metabolically inactive, and minor component of global carbon cycles. Symbioses appear widespread, revealing novel adaptations. Populations show complex spatial structure and evolutionary histories. These new findings redefine deep-sea ecology and the role of Earth's largest biome in global biosphere functioning. Indeed, deep-sea exploration can open new perspectives in ecological research to help mitigate exploitation impacts.
1. As systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) expand globally, there is a risk that new MPAs will be biased toward places that are remote or unpromising for extractive activities, and hence follow the trend of terrestrial protected areas in being ‘residual’ to commercial uses. Such locations typically provide little protection to the species and ecosystems that are most exposed to threatening processes.
2. There are strong political motivations to establish residual reserves that minimize costs and conflicts with users of natural resources. These motivations will likely remain in place as long as success continues to be measured in terms of area (km2) protected.
3. The global pattern of MPAs was reviewed and appears to be residual, supported by a rapid growth of large, remote MPAs. The extent to which MPAs in Australia are residual nationally and also regionally within the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Marine Park was also examined.
4. Nationally, the recently announced Australian Commonwealth marine reserves were found to be strongly residual, making almost no difference to ‘business as usual’ for most ocean uses. Underlying this result was the imperative to minimize costs, but without the spatial constraints of explicit quantitative objectives for representing bioregions or the range of ecological features in highly protected zones.
5. In contrast, the 2004 rezoning of the GBR was exemplary, and the potential for residual protection was limited by applying a systematic set of planning principles, such as representing a minimum percentage of finely subdivided bioregions. Nonetheless, even at this scale, protection was uneven between bioregions. Within-bioregion heterogeneity might have led to no-take zones being established in areas unsuitable for trawling with a risk that species assemblages differ between areas protected and areas left available for trawling.
6. A simple four-step framework of questions for planners and policy makers is proposed to help reverse the emerging residual tendency of MPAs and maximize their effectiveness for conservation. This involves checks on the least-cost approach to establishing MPAs in order to avoid perverse outcomes.
Wilderness areas have been widely discussed in the terrestrial conservation literature, whereas the concept of marine wilderness
has received scant attention. The recent move to protect very large areas of the ocean and thus preserve some of the final
marine wilderness areas is a bold policy initiative. However, some important questions have remained unanswered, such as whether
marine wilderness areas support a different composition and abundance of species than do the smaller marine no-take areas
(NTAs) that are steadily dotting our coastlines. We present a case study from the world's largest wilderness coral reef NTA,
the Chagos Archipelago, and demonstrate that fish biomass is six times greater than and composition substantially different
from even the oldest NTAs in eight other Indian Ocean countries' waters. Clearly, marine wilderness does promote a unique
ecological community, which smaller NTAs fail to attain, and formal legislation is therefore crucial to protect these last
marine wilderness areas.
While population declines can drive the loss of genetic diversity under some circumstances, it has been unclear whether this loss is a general consequence of overharvest in highly abundant marine fishes. We compiled data from 11 049 loci across 140 species and found that allelic richness was lower in overfished populations within 9 of 12 genera and families. A multiple linear regression showed that allelic richness was on average 12% lower (P < 0.0001) in overharvested populations after accounting for the effects of body size, latitude and other factors. Heterozygosity was on average 2% lower (P = 0.030). Simulations confirmed that these patterns are consistent with a recent bottleneck in abundant species and also showed that our analysis likely underestimates the loss of rare alleles by a factor of two or three. This evidence suggests that overharvest drives the decay of genetic diversity across a wide range of marine fishes. Such reductions of genetic diversity in some of the world's most abundant species may lead to a long-term impact of fishing on their evolutionary potential, particularly if abundance remains low and diversity continues to decay.
While previous research has documented marine fish and invertebrates shifting poleward in response to warming climates, less is known about the response of fisheries to these changes. By examining fisheries in the northeastern United States over the last four decades of warming temperatures, we show that northward shifts in species distributions were matched by corresponding northward shifts in fisheries. The proportion of warm-water species caught in most states also increased through time. Most importantly, however, fisheries shifted only 10–30 % as much as their target species, and evidence suggested that economic and regulatory constraints played important roles in creating these lags. These lags may lead to overfishing and population declines if not accounted for in fisheries management and climate adaptation. In coupled natural-human systems such as fisheries, human actions play important roles in determining the sustainability of the system and, therefore, future conservation and climate mitigation planning will need to consider not only biophysical changes, but also human responses to these changes and the feedbacks that these responses have on ecosystems.
Aim Most approaches to conservation prioritization are focused on biodiversity features that are already threatened. While this is necessary in the face of accelerating anthropogenic threats, there have been calls to conserve large intact landscapes, often termed ‘wilderness’, to ensure the long-term persistence of biodiversity. In this study, we examine the consequences of directing conservation expenditure using a threat-based framework for wilderness conservation.
Location The Australian continent.
Methods We measured the degree of congruence between the extent of wilderness and the Australian protected area network in 2000 and 2006, which was established using a threat-based systematic planning framework. We also assessed priority areas for future reserve acquisitions identified by the Australian government under the current framework.
Results In 2000, 14% of Australia’s wilderness was under formal protection, while the protected area network covered only 8.5% of the continent, suggesting a historical bias towards wilderness protection. However, the expansion of the reserve system from 2000 to 2006 was biased towards non-wilderness areas. Moreover, 90% of the wilderness that was protected over this period comprised areas not primarily designated for biodiversity conservation. We found a significant (P < 0.05) negative relationship between bioregions considered to be a priority for future reserve prioritization and the amount of wilderness they contain.
Main conclusions While there is an urgent need to overcome past biases in reserve network design so as to better protect poorly represented species and habitats, prioritization approaches should not become so reactive as to ignore the role that large, intact landscapes play in conserving biodiversity, especially in a time of human-induced climate change. This can be achieved by using current or future threats rather than past threats to prioritize areas, and by incorporating key ecological processes and costs of acquisition and management within the planning framework.
FisheriesRepresentatives of Western Pacific island nations last week put the finishing touches on a series of bold new measures aimed at saving the world's last great tuna stocks. Last May, the group decided to bar fishing in two huge pockets of international waters, creating the largest ever no-fishing zone. Fishing in the rest of the Western Pacific is regulated by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. The result: four no-take areas totaling 1.2 million square kilometers stretching 7000 km from French Polynesia to Palau. Combined, the no-take zones are more than three times the size of California and dwarf the 360,000-km2 reserve in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, whose waters contain far fewer fish.
Fewer protected areas exist in the pelagic ocean than any other ecosystem on Earth. Although there is increasing support for marine protected areas (MPAs) as a tool for pelagic conservation, there have also been numerous criticisms of the ecological, logistical and economic feasibility of place-based management in the dynamic pelagic environment. Here we argue that recent advances across conservation, oceanography and fisheries science provide the evidence, tools and information to address these criticisms and confirm MPAs as defensible and feasible instruments for pelagic conservation. Debate over the efficacy of protected areas relative to other conservation measures cannot be resolved without further implementation of MPAs in the pelagic ocean.
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