IMCC5 focus group invitation: “Indicators of climate change vulnerability: practical measures from conservation physiology for monitoring and management”
Skubel, Rachel Amanda
For
those of you attending or considering the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC5,
June 24-29 in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia), we hope you can join us for the focus group “Indicators
of climate change vulnerability: practical measures from conservation physiology for monitoring and management”.
Participants can register for the focus group during conference registration (https://conbio.org/mini-sites/imcc5/registration/register-here),
in the ‘Focus Groups’ section (id FG144). The description is below:
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.
There is a growing body of climate vulnerability assessments that 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 presents a challenge in terms of finding common ground and interoperability. Here, we will leverage a focus group to 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 short case studies which address (1) traits or results indicating vulnerability (e.g. physiological, habitat use, life history, etc.), (2) how these findings/methods can be used pragmatically in an assessment context to inform management decisions/stakeholder groups, and (3) experiences in assessing climate vulnerability or specific needs of management organizations from such assessments. As a product from this session, participants will have the opportunity to contribute to a synthesis paper. This paper will address indicators across the continuums of data-poor to data-rich (accessibility and historical monitoring or study of a species/population) and resource-poor to resource-rich (human, financial, and/or institutional capacity for assessment), with the goal of generating strategies for assessment techniques which meet the needs of management practitioners and resources users.
Organizer(s): Ms. Rachel Skubel, Dr. Jodie Rummer, Dr. Bjorn Illing
Looking forward to your contributions,
Rachel
Rachel Skubel
Ph.D. Student
Shark Research and Conservation at the University of Miami,
Abess Centre for Ecosystem Science and Policy
e: rsk...@gmail.com | p: 305.781.8146