scholarly journals Impact of Climate Change on Coastal Meadows: a Mesocosm Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaisa Bergamo ◽  
Raymond Ward ◽  
Christopher Joyce ◽  
Kalev Sepp
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Plant Communities ◽  
Coastal Wetlands ◽  
Coastal Wetland ◽  
Migratory Bird ◽  
Lower Shore ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Coastal Meadows

<p>Coastal meadows supply a wide range of ecosystem services, including high carbon storage, high plant species richness and a wide variety of habitat types, which supports breeding and migratory bird populations. However, global change (climate change, pollution and environmental degradation) poses several threats to the stability and ecosystem services supplied by coastal meadows. Specifically within the Baltic Sea, recent estimates foresee various degrees of sea level rise along the Estonian coast and salinity is expected to decrease in the eastern Baltic and increase in the west. In order to assess the effects of climate change in coastal wetlands, an investigation of the influence of changes in water level and salinity on coastal wetland plant communities was undertaken. Future scenarios of Estonian coastal wetlands were evaluated using a three-year mesocosm experiment simulating altered environmental conditions. The response of three plant communities (Open Pioneer, Lower Shore and Upper Shore) were assessed in terms of changes in species composition through time. The experiment included 45 mesocosms, 15 per community with 5 treatments (3 replicates per treatment) with control, altered water level and salinity. Exploratory analysis, ANOVA and NMDS, were used to assess changes in the plant communities throughout the duration of the project. Preliminary results show that Open Pioneer is more sensitive to decreased salinity. A decrease in percentage cover of species adapted to high salinity concentration (e.g. <em>Spergularia marina</em>) was observed. On the other hand, Lower Shore didn’t show any clear changes with the treatments. In order to obtain deeper insights, further analysis are needed to reveal complex community shifts under altered physical conditions.</p>

scholarly journals Coastal wetlands in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, China: probably the most important site globally for the Asian Dowitcher (Limnodromus semipalmatus)

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziyou Yang ◽  
Jing Li ◽  
Yongxiang Han ◽  
Chris J. Hassell ◽  
Kar-Sin Katherine Leung ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Wetlands ◽  
Coastal Wetland ◽  
Migratory Bird ◽  
Jiangsu Province ◽  
Bohai Bay ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Human Disturbances ◽  
Stopover Site ◽  
Stochastic Events ◽  
Global Population

Abstract Background Despite an increasing number of surveys and a growing interest in birdwatching, the population and distribution of Asian Dowitcher (Limnodromus semipalmatus), a species endemic to the East Asian–Australasian and Central Asian Flyways, remains poorly understood, and published information about the species is largely outdated. In boreal spring 2019, over 22,432 Asian Dowitchers were recorded in a coastal wetland at Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, China, constituting 97.5% of its estimated global population. Methods In 2019 and 2020, we conducted field surveys at Lianyungang to determine the numbers of Asian Dowitchers using the area during both southward and northward migrations. We also assessed the distribution and abundance of Asian Dowitchers elsewhere along the China coast by searching literature and consulting expert opinion. Results The coastal wetlands of Lianyungang are the most important stopover site for Asian Dowitchers during both northward and southward migrations; they supported over 90% of the estimated global population during northward migration in two consecutive years (May 2019 and 2020). This area also supported at least 15.83% and 28.42% (or 30.74% and 53.51% using modelled estimates) of the global population during southward migration in 2019 and 2020 respectively. Coastal wetlands in the west and north of Bohai Bay also have been important stopover sites for the species since the 1990s. Although comprehensive, long-term monitoring data are lacking, available evidence suggests that the population of the species may have declined. Conclusions The high concentration of Asian Dowitchers at Lianyungang during migration means the species is highly susceptible to human disturbances and natural stochastic events. The coastal wetlands of Lianyungang should be protected and potentially qualify for inclusion in China’s forthcoming nomination for World Heritage listing of Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China (Phase II) in 2023. Additional research is needed to understand Asian Dowitchers’ distribution and ecology, as well as why such a high proportion of their population rely on the Lianyungang coast.

scholarly journals A protocol for an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized land-use and climate scenarios

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 4537-4562 ◽  
Author(s):  
HyeJin Kim ◽  
Isabel M. D. Rosa ◽  
Rob Alkemade ◽  
Paul Leadley ◽  
George Hurtt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Impacts

Abstract. To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land-use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e., nature's contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) – SSP1xRCP2.6, SSP3xRCP6.0, SSP5xRCP8.6 – to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenario selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem services models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modeling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modeling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios.

scholarly journals A protocol for an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized land-use and climate scenarios

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
HyeJin Kim ◽  
Isabel M. D. Rosa ◽  
Rob Alkemade ◽  
Paul Leadley ◽  
George Hurtt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Impacts

Abstract. To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e. nature’s contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenarios selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem service models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modelling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modelling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios.

Paleoenvironmental records of water level and climatic changes from the middle to late holocene at a Lake Erie coastal wetland, Ontario, Canada

2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Finkelstein ◽  
Anthony M. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Water Level ◽  
Plant Communities ◽  
Little Ice Age ◽  
Lake Erie ◽  
Coastal Wetland ◽  
Climatic Changes ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Climatic Forcing ◽  
Site Water ◽  
Northern Shore

AbstractPollen and diatom assemblages, and peat stratigraphies, from a coastal wetland on the northern shore of Lake Erie were used to analyze water level and climatic changes since the middle Holocene and their effects on wetland plant communities. Peat deposition began 4700 cal yr B.P. during the Nipissing II transgression, which was driven by isostatic rebound. At that time, a diatom-rich wild rice marsh existed at the site. Water level dropped at the end of the Nipissing rise at least 2 m within 200 yr, leading to the development of shallower-water plant communities and an environment too dry for most diatoms to persist. The sharp decline in water level was probably driven primarily by outlet incision, but climate likely played some role. The paleoecological records provide evidence for post-Nipissing century-scale transgressions occurring around 2300, 1160, 700 and 450 cal yr B.P. The chronology for these transgressions correlates with other studies from the region and implies climatic forcing. Peat inception in shallow sloughs across part of the study area around 700 cal yr B.P. coincides with the Little Ice Age. These records, considered alongside others from the region, suggest that the Little Ice Age may have resulted in a wetter climate across the eastern Great Lakes region.

scholarly journals Modelling water-level options for ecosystem services and assessment of climate change: Loktak Lake, northeast India

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (8) ◽  
pp. 1518-1542 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. R. Singh ◽  
J. R. Thompson ◽  
D. G. Kingston ◽  
J. R. French
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Northeast India ◽  
Loktak Lake

scholarly journals A Framework for Addressing Multiple Ecosystem Services in Forest Management Planning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emin Zeki BASKENT ◽  
Jose Guilherme BORGES ◽  
Jan KASPAR
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Ecosystem Management ◽  
Forest Ecosystem ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
Forest Management Planning ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Forest Ecosystem Management

Abstract Background: Forest policy and decision makers are challenged by the need to balance the increasing demand for multiple ecosystem services while addressing the impacts of natural disturbances (e.g. wildfires, droughts, wind, insect attacks) and global change scenarios (e.g. climate change) on its potential supply. This challenge provides the motivation for the development of a framework for incorporating concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services in multiple criteria management planning contexts. Thus, the paper focused on both the analysis of the current state-of-the art in forest management planning and the development of a conceptual framework to accommodate various components in a forest ecosystem management planning process.Results: Based on a thorough recent classification of forest management planning problems and the state-of-the-art research, the key dimensions of that framework and the process were defined. The emphasis is on helping identify how concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services may be analyzed and better understood by forest ecosystem management planning. This research discusses the potential of contemporary management planning approaches to address multiple forest ecosystem services. It highlights the need of a landscape-level perspective and of spatial resolution to integrate multiple ecosystem services. It discusses the importance of methods and tools that may help support the involvement of stakeholders and public participation in hierarchical planning processes. Conclusions: The research addressed the need of methods and tools that may encapsulate the ecological, economic and social complexity of forest ecosystem management to provide an efficient plan, information about tradeoffs between ecosystem services as well as the sensitivity of the plan to uncertain parameters (e.g. prices, climate change) in a timely manner.

scholarly journals Performance of Multicriteria Evaluation and Heuristic Methods in the Delineation of Green Infrastructure in Areas with Fragmented Landscapes

2021 ◽  
Vol 1203 (2) ◽  
pp. 022059
Author(s):  
Rocío Losada ◽  
Marcos Boullón ◽  
Andrés M. García ◽  
David Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Simulated Annealing ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Fragmented Landscape ◽  
Heuristic Methods ◽  
Fragmented Landscapes ◽  
Multicriteria Evaluation ◽  
Wide Range

Abstract The EU Commission has established Green infrastructure as one of the tools to preserve biodiversity and grant the provision of ecosystem services that reduce impacts on natural values like those produced by climate change. Therefore, a European green infrastructure strategy has been created that commit member states to incorporate green infrastructure to their territorial planning. Yet, methodologies to delimit green infrastructure so as to facilitate its inclusion in territorial plans are still scarce. The available methods are mainly based in multicriteria evaluation and focus on zoning general green infrastructure areas taking into account the provision potential of just a few ecosystem services. Considering the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services to delimit green infrastructure elements is key to grant their multifunctionality and increase their efficiency mitigating climate change impacts in natural values and human population. However, the lack of data or the high cost to accurately map ecosystem services provision potential, leads most of the time to infer it from land cover data. This creates problems when using these maps to delimit green infrastructure in areas with fragmented landscapes; since identified green infrastructure areas may be irregular and scattered. There are heuristic methods like simulated annealing that have been used to identify ecosystem services hot spots which consider the regularity and size of the identified patches. These methods can be used to delimit green infrastructure in fragmented landscapes finding a balance between the regularity of the areas and their potential to provide multiple ecosystem services. In the current work, a comparison has been made between the performance of simulated annealing and current multicriteria evaluation methods to delimit green infrastructure multifunctional buffer zones in an area of north-western Spain with a very fragmented landscape. Results have shown that simulated annealing delimits more regular multifunctional buffer areas but with a less average potential for providing multiple ecosystem services. The conclusions of the paper indicate that simulated annealing is good produces more regular multifunctional areas but with a lower ESs provision potential. It was observed that in the case of ESs that were mapped considering factors at landscape scale, their provision potential did not vary too much between the multifunctional buffer areas delimited with each of the methods. This indicates that delineation methods may produce more regular GI elements if ESs provision potential is mapped considering the influence of biophysical factors at a wider landscape scale.

Climate Change Impacts on a Mediterranean Coastal Wetland due to Sea Level Rise (L’Albufera de Valencia, Spain)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara E Estrela Segrelles ◽  
Miguel Ángel Pérez Martín ◽  
Gabriel Gómez Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Coastal Wetlands ◽  
Coastal Wetland ◽  
Water Volume ◽  
Lake Ecosystem ◽  
Lake Levels ◽  
Short Term

<p>Sea level rise produced by climate change severely affects coastal ecosystems. The increase in the area below sea level facilitates the penetration of the marine wedge and causes an increase in soil salinity. Coastal wetlands are areas of great ecological importance due to the richness of flora and fauna that inhabit them. A change in salinity conditions could lead to a reduction or loss of habitat for the wetland biota. Based on RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 CMIP5 multimodel scenarios, in the Western Mediterranean coast, the sea level will rise 0.16 m in the short term (2026 - 2045) and 0.79 m in 2100. Also, high-end scenarios indicate that sea level will rise between 1.35 m and 1.92 m in the long term.</p><p>A sea level rise analysis has been developed in the coastal wetlands of Júcar River Basin District (JRBD). The results show that coastal wetlands are the mainly area affected in the JRBD, so the 90% of the area under the sea level are wetlands. L’Albufera de Valencia is the main wetland in this basin and, also the main wetland affected. It is an anthropized humid zone, regulated by users through gates to preserve the adequate water level for agricultural and environmental purposes such as rice cultivation around the lake and bird habitats conservation, especially in winter. The outcome of the study shows a significative increase in the area below the sea from 507 ha and 4.2 hm<sup>3</sup> of water volume at present to 3,244 ha that represents 42.6 hm<sup>3</sup> of water volume in the short term. In the long term, the area below the sea is 7,253 ha which means 118.4 hm<sup>3</sup> of water volume in the percentile 50 scenario and, in the worst extreme scenario, it is 13,896 ha that represents 289.7 hm<sup>3</sup> of water volume. This leads to a redefinition of the lake management levels as a climate change adaptation measure to prevent the lake salinization and severe impacts in the lake ecosystem. L’Albufera lake levels need to be increased in the next years to avoid the sea water penetration, related to the sea level rise. Thus, in the short term the lake levels must be increased around 0.16 m and, in the long term, L’Albufera levels must be increased around 0.8 m.</p>

Assessing ambitious nature conservation strategies within a 2 degree warmer and food-secure world

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel T.J. Kok ◽  
Johan R. Meijer ◽  
Willem-Jan van Zeist ◽  
Jelle P. Hilbers ◽  
Marco Immovilli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Security Risks ◽  
Global Conservation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Global Biodiversity

AbstractGlobal biodiversity is projected to further decline under a wide range of future socio-economic development pathways, even in sustainability oriented scenarios. This raises the question how biodiversity can be put on a path to recovery, the core challenge for the CBD post-2020 global biodiversity framework. We designed two contrasting, ambitious global conservation strategies, ‘Half Earth’ (HE) and ‘Sharing the Planet’ (SP), and evaluated their ability to restore terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity and to provide ecosystem services while also mitigating climate change and ensuring food security. We applied the integrated assessment framework IMAGE with the GLOBIO biodiversity model, using the ‘Middle of the Road’ Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP2) with its projected human population growth as baseline.We found that both conservation strategies result in a reduction in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services globally, but without additional measures to achieve effective climate mitigation they will be insufficient to restore biodiversity. The HE strategy performs better for terrestrial biodiversity protection (biodiversity intactness (MSA), Red List Index, geometric mean abundance) in currently still natural regions, reflecting global conservation priorities. The SP strategy yields more improvements for biodiversity in human-used areas, aquatic biodiversity and for regulating ecosystem services (pest control, pollination, erosion control), reflecting regional priorities. However, ‘conservation only’ scenarios show a considerable increase in food security risks (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa) compared to the baseline and limited reduction of global temperature increase. Only when conservation strategies are combined with climate change mitigation efforts and additional actions especially in the agricultural and energy system into a portfolio of ‘integrated sustainability measures’, both conservation strategies result in restoring biodiversity to current values or even some improvement, while keeping global warming below two degrees and keeping food security risks below baseline. Minimizing food wastes and reducing consumption of animal products will be crucial.

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