Arctic Marine Biodiversity Monitoring Plan (CBMP-MARINE PLAN).

Abstract

Arctic biodiversity is under growing pressure from both climate change and resource development, requiring both managers and users to have access to more complete information to help them make timely and informed conservation and adaptation decisions. Yet existing monitoring programs remain largely uncoordinated, limiting our ability to efectively monitor, understand and respond to biodiversity trends at the circumpolar scale. The maintenance of healthy Arctic ecosystems is a global imperative as the Arctic plays a critical role in the Earth’s physical, chemical and biological balance. Maintaining the health of Arctic ecosystems is also of fundamental economic, cultural and spiritual importance to Arctic residents, many of whom maintain close ties to the land and sea. The Arctic’s size and complexity represents a signiicant challenge towards detecting and attributing changes in biodiversity. This demands an integrated, pan-Arctic, ecosystem-based approach that can efectively identify important trends in biodiversity and identify their underlying causes. To meet these challenges, CAFF’s Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP) is working with partners across the Arctic to harmonize and enhance long-term Arctic biodiversity monitoring in order to facilitate more rapid detection, communication and response to signiicant trends and pressures. Towards this end, the CBMP is developing four, ecosystem-based Arctic biodiversity monitoring plans (Marine, Terrestrial, Freshwater and Coastal). These umbrella monitoring plans work with existing monitoring capacity to facilitate improved and cost-efective monitoring through enhanced integration and coordination. The Arctic Marine Biodiversity Monitoring Plan (CBMP-Marine Plan) is the irst of the CBMP’s four pan-Arctic biodiversity monitoring plans. The overall goal of the CBMP-Marine Plan is to improve our ability to detect and understand the causes of long-term change in the composition, structure and function of Arctic marine ecosystems, as well as to develop authoritative assessments of key elements of Arctic marine biodiversity (e.g., key indicators, ecologically pivotal and/or other important taxa). The CBMP-Marine Plan integrates existing marine biodiversity monitoring eforts (both traditional scientiic and communitybased) from across the Arctic and represents an agreement between six Arctic coastal nations and a great number of national, regional, Indigenous and academic organizations and agencies in all six countries on how to monitor Arctic marine ecosystems. More speciically, the Plan identiies agreement on the following: ► A suite of common biological parameters and indicators to monitor and report on change across Arctic marine ecosystems; ► Key abiotic parameters, relevant to marine biodiversity, which should be monitored; ► Optimal sampling schemes (e.g., where, when and how the suite of parameters should be measured and by whom); and, ► Arctic Marine Areas, by which monitoring results will be organized and reported. ARCTIC MARINE BIODIVERSITY 5 MONITORING PLAN The Plan also begins to identify: ► Priority gaps (taxa, spatial, and/or temporal) in monitoring coverage; and, ► Existing datasets and information that can be aggregated to map biodiversity and to establish baselines and retrospective trends in Arctic marine biodiversity. The creation of the Marine Expert Networks will further the work of identifying priority gaps, identifying existing datasets for aggregation and further reining the suite of biological indicators that will be used to report on the state and function of Arctic marine ecosystems. The Plan also details the outputs of this efort, or more speciically, how the biological information will be managed, integrated, analyzed and reported on with a focus on: ► Producing long-term datasets that can facilitate a greater understanding of natural variability in Arctic marine ecosystems and the response of these systems to anthropogenic drivers. ► Creating a publicly accessible, eicient, and transparent platform to house and manage information on the status of and trends in Arctic marine biodiversity to facilitate more efective policy responses. ► Providing regular and authoritative assessments of key elements and regions of the Arctic marine system that respond to regional, national, and international reporting requirements. Finally, Plan implementation timelines and costs over the next 10 years are detailed to ensure appropriate resourcing for this coordinated efort. Implementation of this coordinated Plan will result in improved capacity to detect, attribute and report on biodiversity change in the Arctic marine environment, at a lower cost than multiple, uncoordinated approaches.