ALBERT

Description: Executive Summary:The marine environment plays a critical role in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that remains within Earth’s atmosphere, but has not received as much attention as theterrestrial environment when it comes to climate change discussions, programs, and plans for action. It is now apparent that the oceans have begun to reach a state of CO2saturation, no longer maintaining the “steady-state” carbon cycle that existed prior to the Industrial Revolution. The increasing amount of CO2 present within the oceans and theatmosphere has an effect on climate and a cascading effect on the marine environment. Potential physical effects of climate change within the marine environment, includingocean acidification, changes in wind and upwelling regimes, increasing global sea surface temperatures, and sea level rise, can lead to dramatic, fundamental changes within marine and coastal ecosystems. Altered ecosystems can result in changing coastal economies through a reduction in marine ecosystem services such as commercial fish stocks andcoastal tourism.Local impacts from climate change should be a front line issue for natural resource managers, but they often feel too overwhelmed by the magnitude of this issue to begin totake action. They may not feel they have the time, funding, or staff to take on a challenge as large as climate change and continue to not act as a result. Already, natural resource managers work to balance the needs of humans and the economy with ecosystem biodiversity and resilience. Responsible decisions are made each day that consider a widevariety of stakeholders, including community members, agencies, non-profit organizations, and business/industry. The issue of climate change must be approached as a collaborative effort, one that natural resource managers can facilitate by balancing human demands with healthy ecosystem function through research and monitoring,education and outreach, and policy reform.The Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change in their 2007 report titled, “Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable” chargedgovernments around the world with developing strategies to “adapt to ongoing and future changes in climate change by integrating the implications of climate change into resource management and infrastructure development”. Resource managers must make future management decisions within an uncertain and changing climate based on both physical and biological ecosystem response to climate change and human perception of and response to the issue. Climate change is the biggest threat facing any protected area today and resource managers must lead the charge in addressing this threat. (PDF has 59 pages.)