Towards mapping and assessing antarctic marine ecosystem services – The Weddell Sea case study

• Published in: Ecosystem Services
• Main Authors: Deininger, Michaela, Koellner, Thomas, Brey, Thomas, Teschke, Katharina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Antarctic; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/42542/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/42542/1/Deininger_et-al_2016.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.49327; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.49327.d001

This study is the first to quantify and to map the provision of ecosystem core services (ES) – tourism, genetic diversity and carbon sequestration – for a large Antarctic marine area, the Weddell Sea. Additionally, synergies and trade-offs between the ES were explored. The analyses conducted during this study covered both spatial and temporal correlations between pairs of ES, and between individual ES and sea ice coverage. Overall, service delivery in the studied seascape is distinctly heterogeneous, albeit there are areas where multiple benefits are provided simultaneously (“super hotspots”). Our findings indicate that in wide parts of the Weddell Sea, small scale conservation efforts may not achieve their intended goals. They also show that particularly sea ice cover restrains tourism, i.e. this sector may expect strong growth in a future of global warming driven sea ice retreat.