Projections of Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Protected Areas: Palau, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Bering Sea

• Main Author: Brink, Talya ten
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 05-09-2023
• Subjects: Quantitative Biology - Populations and Evolution; Quantitative Biology - Quantitative Methods; Quantitative Finance - Economics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2309.02323

Climate change substantially impacts ecological systems. Marine species are
shifting their distribution because of climate change towards colder waters,
potentially compromising the benefits of currently established Marine Protected
Areas (MPAs). Therefore, we demonstrate how three case study regions will be
impacted by warming ocean waters to prepare stakeholders to understand how the
fisheries around the MPAs is predicted to change. We chose the case studies to
focus on large scale MPAs in i) a cold, polar region, ii) a tropical region
near the equator, and iii) a tropical region farther from the equator. We
quantify the biological impacts of shifts in species distribution due to
climate change for fishing communities that depend on the Palau National Marine
Sanctuary, the Great Barrier Reef Marine National Park Zone, and the North
Bering Sea Research Area MPAs. We find that fisheries sectors will be impacted
differently in different regions and show that all three regions can be
supported by this methodology for decision making that joins sector income and
species diversity.