Evaluating the sensitivity of Central and South American benthic communities to global climate changes

Resumo

The main purposes of the workshop are to list and map macro-scale habitats within central and southern South American Atlantic hard bottom benthic communities, on an ecosystem scale, and discuss their sensitivity to global climate changes, as a support to the regional Fifth IPCC Assessment Report (AR5) 2013/2014. As one of the products, it is intended to forge long-term collaboration through the establishment of a collaborative project of ecological monitoring at stations scattered throughout this region, based on a unified protocol. The objective of workshop Stage 1 is the identification and producing of a standardized list of habitats types, and sub-types in lower scales, using a shared terminology, and its mapping, necessary first steps in order to identify the threats that global warming poses to marine hard bottom ecosystems. The objective of Stage 2 will be to discuss the main threats to each ecosystem listed in Stage 1, with the collaboration of specialists on specific environments or on the effects of the alteration of specific environmental factors, with special attention to the increase of seawater motion, warming and acidification, alterations in oceanic circulation, increased UV, and toxic algal blooms. The objectives of Stage 3 will be the prediction of scenarios as a product synthesis, directed to collaborate to the AR5 2013/2014 elaboration, based on the existent data of habitat distribution along the Central and South American Atlantic coast, their sensibilities and the foreseen climate marine scenarios. It will be constructed using empiric descriptive information, based on an expert approach, and data modeling, when information were available. (AU)