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MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling

Eastern Tropical Pacific reef fish on the move: biodiversity reorganisation and societal consequences

Alternative title: Fisken i revene i det østlige tropiske Stillehavet er på farten: omorganisering av biologisk mangfold og samfunnsmessige konsekvenser

Awarded: NOK 3.1 mill.

The eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) is a key region for marine biodiversity with complex ecosystem function and plays an important role for the region’s socio-economic wellbeing. By adopting a novel interdisciplinary approach, EASMO aims to provide integrated assessments on how future climate change will impact the marine environment, biodiversity, and the ecosystem services (such as fishing and tourism) in ETP. NORCE has developed a high-resolution regional coupled model to quantify the range of changes in temperature, oxygen, pH, and primary production under various future scenarios. This information will be forwarded to our international partners, who will apply their ecosystem models to determine potential consequences on the region’s species distribution. The El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) plays a vital role in regulating the climate variability in the ETP region. It is important to gain a better understanding of how ENSO will be affected by future climate change. In EASMO, we analyze ENSO projections in an ensemble of 16 Earth system models. We found that under a future scenario without strong reduction in CO2 emissions, not only will the frequency of El-Nino and La-Nina events increase but their amplitudes will also amplify. The downstream impacts of the region’s ecosystem and society to this regime shift are still not well understood. In the remaining duration of EASMO, the consortium hope to close this knowledge gap and contribute to improving the climate-adaptiveness of the regional governance, particularly toward fisheries management in the ETP.

Marine species are “on the move” escaping hostile climatic conditions. Distribution range shifts of marine biota happen remarkably faster, cause dramatic changes in species interactions and redistribute fishery resources across borders, thus bringing severe ecological, food security, and governance challenges. Redistributions are particularly concerning in marine fish, which provide three billion people with ~15% of their animal protein needs. EASMO will deliver several layers of new scientific knowledge that can be directly integrated into decision-making tools, support adaptive transboundary governance approaches, and propel actions for meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2 Zero hunger, 13 Climate action, and 14 Life below water. EASMO will advance on the plethora of emerging experiments that expose fishes to altered environmental conditions, by investigating the synergistic effect of warming, deoxygenation, and acidification on physiology, function, and nutritional content. We will also improve existing knowledge on the genomic and proteomic bases for climate-induced fish evolution and generate unprecedented information on molecular, cellular, and organism physiology. Species Distribution Models (SDMs) have forecasted the global-scale effects of climate change on fish and fisheries, whilst intentionally averaging over interannual and decadal variability. Zooming into a pivotal ocean basin, we will apply an ensemble of new-generation SDMs that will allow for previously unaccounted-for interactions between interannual-to-decadal anthropogenic climatic changes (e.g. El Niño Southern Oscillation), whilst incorporating evolutionary adaptation. Our range-shift projections, provided using state-of-the-art coupled regional climate model, will be scaled-up to map future change in multiple biodiversity facets, ecosystem function levels, as well as catch potential, fisheries revenue, and nutritional value across Exclusive Economic Zones.

Publications from Cristin

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MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling