Climate change and marine systems

Over the years my research has shifted focus from examining biological and ecological processes at various temporal and spatial scales of organisation, towards seeking a more integrated socio-ecological understanding of natural systems. After an ARC post doc, several seemingly unrelated grants, projects and short-term appointments fortuitously laid the groundwork for the larger-scale collaborative and interdisciplinary projects this presentation will highlight, all with a focus on climate change impacts and adaptation. Regional variation in the rate and magnitude of climate drivers offers considerable potential for rapidly changing regions to serve as ‘natural laboratories’ providing knowledge and tools for efficient and effective adaptation to meet some of the key challenges of associated with significant change. With colleagues, I examined our current capacity to use the ocean’s rapidly warming ocean regions for assessing climate change risks to inform longer-term adaptation strategies for sustainable natural resource use and management. Using metrics derived from across ecological, social, economic and governance domains, we developed a global ‘Marine Adaptation Index’ of our observational capacity for detection of climate change impacts, and our ability to act, learn, and moreover, to communicate and share advances in knowledge with to the broader community. We find substantial disparity among regions in the potential to detect biological impacts of climate change, and where change can be detected, in the proficiency for sharing new knowledge with the rest of the warming world. Additionally, through a global review of the socio-ecological impacts of ‘species on the move’, one of the most pervasive climate change impacts, we found that consideration of these effects were lacking in most global mitigation and adaptation strategies, including the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.