Linking biodiversity and Global Environmental Changes in Brazilian coastal habitats

Abstract

The Earth's climate is changing at a time when society is re-evaluating its relationship with nature and with the services that natural systems provide to human societies. Human actions, which are the major cause of these changes, also reduce the ability of ecological systems to cope with and adapt to the new scenarios. As a result, in the near future only the biota but humanity as a whole will feel the effects of our unsustainable way of life. Among the expected effects, there is the compromising of ecosystem services that are the basis of life and the human economy in diferente parts of the globe.Oceans are central to the climate system, recycling half of the oxygen that we breathe and absorbing half of the carbon dioxide that we emit through the burning of fossil fuels. The oceans hold 97% of the Earth's water and 95% of all mobile carbon, providing food and livelihoods. Determining the effects of Global Environmental Changes (GECs) on the oceans are critical to understanding what is changing, how is it changing, and how these changes will influence society. Direct and indirect effects of GECs on the marine environment are already perceptible, but others can only be projected based on observations, experimentation and modeling efforts. We have only a rudimentary understanding of the sensitivity, vulnerability and adaptability of natural and managed marine ecosystems to GECs, especially in the South Atlantic.On the Brazilian coast, the existing baseline, monitoring and predictive studies are insufficient to understand the detrimental effects of GECs. The lack of long-term studies of biodiversity has left Brazil far behind in global assessments of the consequences of GECs on coastal ecosystems. In contrast, the Brazilian coastline has vegetated ecosystems (mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass and rhodolith beds) that together contain hundreds of millions of tons of stored carbon, making Brazil a good place to test new mechanisms to evaluate and conserve blue carbon. To promote the development of a regional science-policy agenda to respond to the urgent demand for sound scientific advice in the face of rapid changes to marine coastal ecosystems, it is necessary to integrate baseline studies to assess the habitat distribution and quality of the ecosystems, as well as the human threats and risks associated with local and regional climate-change scenarios; promote strategic monitoring of physical and biological parameters to fill critical gaps in knowledge; and provide an early warning system of GECs to coastal communities. There is also a need to refine regional and local scenarios of threats related to GECs, to assess the uncertainties, risks and thresholds at the organism and ecosystem levels.It is imperative to integrate Brazilian researchers and institutions in order to promote the consolidation of existing knowledge and the implementation of a broad and continuous observational network. The Network for Monitoring Benthic Coastal Habitats (ReBentos) was created to detect the effects of regional and global env...

Blue Carbon Ecosystems in Brazil: Overview and an Urgent Call for Conservation and Restoration

“…The jurisdictional maritime territory of Brazil, known as the "Blue Amazon" (Figure 1), contains vegetated and non-vegetated coastal and marine ecosystems (mangroves, salt marshes, seagrass meadows, MAFs, and other systems) (Table 1) that could collectively contain a vast amount of stored carbon, making Brazil an ideal place to test new mechanisms for evaluating, conserving, and restoring BCEs (Turra and Denadai, 2016;Bertram et al, 2021).…”

Coastal Ocean Observing and Modeling Systems in Brazil: Initiatives and Future Perspectives

“…The assessment aims to determine (i) the state of knowledge on biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as trends and determinants of the transformation of Brazilian coastal and marine zones; (ii) the consequences of this transformation for human well-being associated with biodiversity and ecosystem services, taking into account the various knowledge and value systems; (iii) the necessary measures, and governance options, to mitigate degradation and to restore biodiversity and ecosystem services. The Brazilian Network for Monitoring Coastal Benthic Habitats (ReBentos) 55 aims to detect the effects of regional and global environmental changes on benthic habitats, by creating timeseries of data and syntheses on biodiversity along the Brazilian coast (Turra and Denadai, 2016), as the Protocols for Monitoring Benthic Coastal Habitats (Turra and Denadai, 2015), the Special Issue in the Brazilian Journal of Oceanography 56 published in 2016 and the Springer Series on the Brazilian Marine Biodiversity (Lana and Bernardino, 2018;Sumida et al, 2020).…”

Temporal series analysis of abiotic data for a subtropical Brazilian rocky shore

“…These abiotic factors are known to affect survival and reproduction of organisms inhabiting the intertidal zone of rocky shores [1] . Although there are monitoring initiatives of marine communities for the Brazilian coast (e.g., ReBentos monitoring sites [2] ), the monitoring of abiotic factors is still scarce. In an attempt to supplant this lack, we gathered historical data available in different online databases, all concerning Brazilian southeast coast, specifically São Paulo State southern coast ( Table 1 ), from localities near Mar Casado Beach rocky shore.…”