Modelling ocean acidification impacts: from biological experiments to economic assessments and social impacts

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.

Assessing the potential biological and socio-economic consequences resulting from climate change (CC) and ocean acidification (OA) impacts on marine ecosystems is necessary for the sustainable utilisation and management of the oceans’ resources and services. This requires interdisciplinary collaborations between experimental biologists, oceanographers, ecosystem modellers, social scientists and economists. Common assessment frameworks to integrate these interdisciplinary approaches are needed to bridge the methodological and scale challenges between sciences. We present such an assessment framework to assess the impacts of CC and OA on marine ecosystems and their services, with a view to develop an economic analysis that considers the needs of stakeholders. This framework aims to bring experiments focused on the potential impacts of OA into models, producing a solid basis for socio-economic analysis concentrating on three key areas: 1) species’ life-histories (e.g. survival, development, growth); 2) primary production and biogeochemical processes; and 3) species’ habitats availability (e.g. increased seaweed and seagrass production). The validity of this framework is demonstrated using case studies from research on commercial fish species and invertebrates.