Indicators of climate change vulnerability: practical measures from conservation physiology for monitoring and management

As the impacts of climate change in marine ecosystems become more frequent and severe, there is a growing need for resource managers and users to monitor ongoing impacts and plan for change. Climate change can lead to spatial... [ view full abstract ]

As the impacts of climate change in marine ecosystems become more frequent and severe, there is a growing need for resource managers and users to monitor ongoing impacts and plan for change. Climate change can lead to spatial shifts of target fishery species and/or increase stress on local populations. In turn, a socio-economic system including fishers, resource managers, distributors, and other stakeholders may need to adapt to sustain their activities in this changing environment.

A growing body of climate vulnerability assessments take a coarse scale ‘triage’ approach, as well as more focused studies that experimentally assess response to climate stressors. The wide range of methodologies and indicators employed across these assessments and studies present a challenge in terms of finding common ground and interoperability. This focus group will present and discuss physiological and ecological indicators of vulnerability to climate change in marine species and populations, and explore practical pathways to implement these indicators in management and monitoring.

Participants are encouraged to share case studies which address: traits or results indicating vulnerability, how findings or methods can be used pragmatically in an assessment context to inform management decisions and stakeholder groups, experiences in assessing climate vulnerability, and/or specific needs of management organizations or communities from such assessments. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute to a synthesis paper, addressing indicators across the continuums of data-poor to data-rich and resource-poor to resource-rich, with the goal of generating strategies for assessment techniques which meet the needs of management practitioners and resources users.