Wednesday December 1, 2021
PhysOrg —
A new decision-making framework designed by an international team of fisheries researchers can help fisheries bolster their ability to adapt to a warming world. The tool, said marine ecologist Jacob Eurich at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS), is meant to take a lot of the guesswork out of finding resilience in a time of climate change.
“Our goal is to be able to throw any fishery in this framework and pull out the bright spots and dark spots,” Eurich said. “And the idea is that a stakeholder group could then look at this framework and say, ‘Here are the three attributes that we should focus on, first and foremost, that will give us the biggest impact moving forward.'” By giving fisheries the ability to identify actions based on their specific needs, priorities and conditions, they, and the communities that rely on them, are empowered to implement policies and other measures that could help them withstand the various effects of a warming Earth.
The research is published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.
What is resilience?
As the global population continues to rise, fisheries are being called upon to provide an increasing amount of the world’s food. They also are among the first food systems to experience the effects of climate change, as waters warm and oceans acidify.