Marime Mammals & CC: NW Mediterranean prioritization for 2030#
Description#
In this example, the geographical and time scale boundaries are well defined, and we know that climate change need to be considered:
Criterion 1 Desirable spatio-temporal scale of the analysis (Highlighting the boundaries) application: Projections need to be “Near Term” and limited to the Med Sea (so the considered stressor is mainly Sea Surface Temperature regarding actual data availability and knowledge.)
Criterion 2 Type of output application: the output should be a metric that could be ranked (score or quantitative) as the main purpose of the question is to compare and prioritize species. Trait-based vulnerability assessment is suitable as it will evaluate the influence of climate change on the species and provide a metric for comparison.
Criterion 3 Expertise/Complexity of the model application: Marine mammals are moving species that will probably move before presenting the appearance of adaptations to climate change. Moreover, near-term questions are less likely to induce evolutionary process. For these reasons, a trait-based vulnerability assessment based only on Sensitivity criteria is particularly suitable to compare the near-term answers between species and will be selected to feed the macro-criterion Vulnerability in the Analysis and Diagnosis Practices. The selection of a single criterion among the criteria feeding the Vulnerability macro-criterion will respect the parsimony approach (simple equation) and lead to an acceptable level of uncertainty.
Final output of the scoping: in this example, the output of the scoping will be to use a Trait-based vulnerability assessment based only on Sensitivity criteria to sea surface temperature.
Cambra et al (2024). Guidance for including climate change scenarios in protection and prioritization strategies for Marine Protected Areas development. Deliverable D3.3, under the WP3 of MSP4BIO project (GA n° 101060707)