The Ocean Tipping Points Project: Embedding the science of tipping points in ocean management

Background/Question/Methods

The Ocean Tipping Points collaborative research project seeks to understand and characterize tipping points in ocean ecosystems, where a small change in the environment or human activities results in a disproportionate change in the ecosystem. We are further working to develop tools and approaches to integrate this information into marine management. To achieve these goals we are synthesizing and analyzing existing global data on ocean tipping points and their potential indicators, testing whether management based on knowledge of ecosystem thresholds and dynamics results in better outcomes, evaluating regulatory and policy opportunities to incorporate ecosystem thresholds and indicators into marine management, and co-developing and field-testing tools and analytical approaches for management of ecosystems prone to tipping points. Through case studies of Hawaiian coral reefs and the pelagic nearshore ecosystem of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, we are characterizing ecosystem regimes, their drivers and feedbacks across multiple scales, identifying leading indicators of ecosystem shifts, quantifying threshold responses to key drivers, and evaluating the tradeoffs associated with management alternatives aimed at promoting ecosystem resilience.

Results/Conclusions

This poster will present results of Phase I of the project and introduce the questions that drive Phase II – case study application. The diverse activities of Phase I have returned a number of key results: (1) We synthesized ~100 examples of marine regime shifts from around the world, which reveal that natural environmental variation and multiple anthropogenic drivers (particularly overharvest and nutrient input) have combined to cause dramatic changes in ecosystems as diverse as oyster reefs, kelp forests, coral reefs, and the open ocean. These shifts occur at scales that matter for ecosystem services and persist on the order of decades. (2) Synthesis of individual stressor responses revealed that non-linear relationships and thresholds are common in pelagic marine ecosystems and may currently be under-estimated. (3) A review of 51 examples of threshold-based management from around the world offers evidence that use of thresholds leads to better ecological outcomes. (4) Finally a review of US federal environmental laws demonstrates ample opportunities to apply a scientific understanding of nonlinear ecosystem dynamics to decisionmaking under existing law and policy as well as opportunities to improve how we respond to tipping points through new policy.