Charlotte K. Whitney

Climate change is affecting the ocean, altering the biogeography of marine species. Yet marine protected area (MPA) planning still rarely incorporates projected species range shifts. We used the outputs of species distribution models fitted with biological and climate data as inputs to identify trends in occurrence for marine species in British Columbia (BC), Canada. We assessed and compared two ways of incorporating climate change projections into MPA planning. First, we overlaid 98 species with modelled distributions now and by the mid-21st century under two contrasting (“no mitigation” and “strong mitigation”) climate change scenarios with existing Provincial marine parks in BC, to ask which species could overlap with protected areas in the future. Second, we completed a spatial prioritization analysis using Marxan with the projected future species ranges as inputs, to ask where priority regions exist for the 98 marine species. We found that many BC marine parks will lose species in both climate scenarios that we analyzed, and that protecting 30% of important marine species will be challenging under the “no mitigation” climate change scenario. Challenges included the coarse resolution of the data and uncertainty in projecting species range shifts.

Whitney, C. K., A. Frid, B. K. Edgar, J. Walkus, P. Siwallace, I. L. Siwallace, and N. C. Ban 2020. “Like the plains people losing the buffalo”: perceptions of climate change impacts, fisheries management, and adaptation actions by Indigenous peoples in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Ecology and Society 25(4):33. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12027-250433

Planning for adaptation to climate change requires regionally relevant information on rising air and ocean temperatures, sea levels, increasingly frequent and intense storms, and other climate-related impacts. However, in many regions there are limited focused syntheses of the climate impacts, risks, and potential adaptation strategies for coastal marine areas and sectors. We report on a regional assessment of climate change impacts and recommendations for adaptation strategies in the NE Pacific Coast (British Columbia, Canada), conducted in collaboration with a regional planning and plan implementation partnership (Marine Plan Partnership for the North Pacific Coast), aimed at bridging the gaps between climate science and regional adaptation planning. We incorporated both social and ecological aspects of climate change impacts and adaptations, and the feedback mechanisms which may result in both increased risks and opportunities for the following areas of interest: “Ecosystems”, “Fisheries and Aquaculture”, “Communities”, and “Marine Infrastructure”. As next steps within the region, we propose proactive planning measures including communication of the key impacts and projections and cross-sectoral assessments of climate vulnerability and risk to direct decision-making.

Because of the complexity and speed of environmental, climatic, and socio-political change in coastal marine social-ecological systems, there is significant academic and applied interest in assessing and fostering the adaptive capacity of coastal communities. Adaptive capacity refers to the latent ability of a system to respond proactively and positively to stressors or opportunities. A variety of qualitative, quantitative, and participatory approaches have been developed and applied to understand and assess adaptive capacity, each with different benefits, drawbacks, insights, and implications. Drawing on case studies of coastal communities from around the globe, we describe and compare 11 approaches that are often used to study adaptive capacity of social and ecological systems in the face of social, environmental, and climatic change. We synthesize lessons from a series of case studies to present important considerations to frame research and to choose an assessment approach, key challenges to analyze adaptive capacity in linked social-ecological systems, and good practices to link results to action to foster adaptive capacity. We suggest that more attention be given to integrated social-ecological assessments and that greater effort be placed on evaluation and monitoring of adaptive capacity over time and across scales. Overall, although sustainability science holds a promise of providing solutions to real world problems, we found that too few assessments seem to lead to tangible outcomes or actions to foster adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems.

Whitney, C. K., N. J. Bennett, N. C. Ban, E. H. Allison, D. Armitage, J. L. Blythe, J. M. Burt, W. Cheung, E. M. Finkbeiner, M. Kaplan-Hallam, I. Perry, N. J. Turner, and L. Yumagulova. 2017. Adaptive capacity: from assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 22(2):22. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09325-220222

Predicting the future impact of changing thermal regimes on life history stages for wild fish requires a better understanding of the relative importance of population origin and offspring size on embryonic development. We assessed hatch timing and offspring size of Sockeye Salmon Oncorhynchus nerka in relation to egg size (variation from full‐sibling families), population origin, and temperature (three treatments of 10, 14, and 16°C). Both hatch timing and hatch duration varied by the interacting effects of population origin and thermal treatment, shown in crossing reaction norms. Hatching was faster, yet more variable, at higher temperatures across many groups, so while fish generally hatched faster, developmental asynchrony also increased among families. On average, fish incubated at 16°C were shorter but not lighter at hatch, showing developmental tradeoffs between basal metabolic requirements and growth. Egg size decreased among populations as migratory distance increased, but development rates were not related to egg size. In this case, embryonic development rates were linked to temperature and population‐specific cues for hatch timing more than to the maternal influence of egg size.Received March 10, 2014; accepted June 3, 2014

Using a fixed‐speed test, burst swimming performance was found to vary among nine populations of emergent sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka fry reared in a common‐garden environment. No consistent relationship was, however, detected between difficulty of fry migration (upstream v. downstream) to rearing areas and total burst swimming duration or bursting rate.