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Recent pace of change in human impact on the world’s ocean
- Source :
- Scientific Reports, Vol 9, Iss 1, Pp 1-8 (2019), Scientific Reports
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Nature Publishing Group, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Humans interact with the oceans in diverse and profound ways. The scope, magnitude, footprint and ultimate cumulative impacts of human activities can threaten ocean ecosystems and have changed over time, resulting in new challenges and threats to marine ecosystems. A fundamental gap in understanding how humanity is affecting the oceans is our limited knowledge about the pace of change in cumulative impact on ocean ecosystems from expanding human activities – and the patterns, locations and drivers of most significant change. To help address this, we combined high resolution, annual data on the intensity of 14 human stressors and their impact on 21 marine ecosystems over 11 years (2003–2013) to assess pace of change in cumulative impacts on global oceans, where and how much that pace differs across the ocean, and which stressors and their impacts contribute most to those changes. We found that most of the ocean (59%) is experiencing significantly increasing cumulative impact, in particular due to climate change but also from fishing, land-based pollution and shipping. Nearly all countries saw increases in cumulative impacts in their coastal waters, as did all ecosystems, with coral reefs, seagrasses and mangroves at most risk. Mitigation of stressors most contributing to increases in overall cumulative impacts is urgently needed to sustain healthy oceans.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
Conservation of Natural Resources
Oceans and Seas
Fishing
High resolution
Climate change
lcsh:Medicine
Article
Environmental impact
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Humans
Human Activities
Ecosystem
Marine ecosystem
14. Life underwater
lcsh:Science
Pace
Marine biology
geography
Multidisciplinary
geography.geographical_feature_category
business.industry
Water Pollution
Environmental resource management
fungi
lcsh:R
Coral reef
030104 developmental biology
13. Climate action
Environmental science
lcsh:Q
sense organs
business
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
geographic locations
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20452322
- Volume :
- 9
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Scientific Reports
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....746ffd9d980906ee73131dec9becc0a2