Impact details: loss of provisioning and protective services

impact chain for tropical coastal areas / acidification (click nodes to view details):
selected case study results:
Case study reference
Spatial context
Impact description (case study)
Case study recommendations
Cooley, S. R., & Doney, S. C. (2009). Anticipating ocean acidification's economic consequences for commercial fisheries. Environmental Research Letters, 4(2), 024007. North America: USA Ocean acidification will change marine ecosystems profoundly by increasing dissolved CO2 and decreasing ocean pH, carbonate ion concentration, and calcium carbonate mineral saturation state worldwide. These conditions hinder growth of calcium carbonate shells and skeletons by many marine plants and animals. The first direct impact on humans may be through declining harvests and fishery revenues from shellfish, their predators, and coral reef habitats. This study examines US commercial fishery revenues to project the economic effects of ocean acidification over the next 50 years using atmospheric CO2 trajectories and laboratory studies of its effects, focusing especially on mollusks. In 2007, the $3.8 billion US annual domestic ex-vessel commercial harvest ultimately contributed $34 billion to the US gross national product. Mollusks contributed 19%, or $748 million, of the ex-vessel revenues that year. Substantial revenue declines, job losses, and indirect economic costs may occur if ocean acidification broadly damages marine habitats, alters marine resource availability, and disrupts other ecosystem services. Designing new policies must begin with comprehensive research targeted towards regional needs. First, expanded time series studies of coastal and open ocean seawater chemistry are needed to monitor ocean acidification's progress. Second, basic studies at the organism level are required to enhance our currently limited knowledge of commercial and keystone species' responses to decreased pH and elevated CO2.Third, ecosystem-wide studies are needed to shed light on secondary effects from habitat and prey losses. Fourth, economic and social science studies are needed to understand better how markets, prices, and communities will respond to declining fishery harvests and how best to mitigate potential socio-economic impacts.
Kleypas, J. A., & Yates, K. K. (2009). Coral reefs and ocean acidification. Oceanography, 22(4), 108-117. Global The decline in calcium carbonate production, coupled with an increase in calcium carbonate dissolution, will diminish reef building and the benefits that reefs provide, such as high structural complexity that supports biodiversity on reefs, and breakwater effects that protect shorelines and create quiet habitats for other ecosystems, such as mangroves and seagrass beds. These changes can degrade the reef 's resilience (i.e., its ability to withstand disturbance) even while it appears visibly healthy, until at some point it can no longer sustain even minor disturbances, and becomes vulnerable to an ecological "regime shift", that is, a rapid transition to a different ecosystem state. As ocean acidification proceeds, more and more species will be affected. Some species will be losers (e.g., corals) and some will be winners (e.g., seagrasses), but the higher the proportion of species that are affected (including winners and losers), the higher the probability that some major function of the ecosystem (e.g., reef building, grazing, filter feeding, sediment turnover) will collapse, leading to a regime shift. -
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