Interacting Regional-Scale Regime Shifts for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Current trajectories of global change may lead to regime shifts at regional scales, driving coupled human-environment systems to highly degraded states in terms of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. For business-as-usual socioeconomic development pathways, regime shifts are proj...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BioScience
Main Authors: Leadley, P., Proenca, V., Fernandez-Manjarres, J., Pereira, H.M., Alkemade, J.R.M., Biggs, R., Bruley, E., Cheung, W., Cooper, D., Figueiredo, J., Gilman, E., Guenette, S., Hurtt, G., Mbow, C., Oberdorff, T., Revenga, C., Scharlemann, J.P.W., Scholes, R., Smith, M.S., Sumaila, U.R., Walpole, M.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2014
Subjects:
amazon basin
climate-change
deforestation
forests
global fisheries
impacts
land-use
marine biodiversity
ocean acidification
tipping points
Ocean acidification
Online Access:https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/interacting-regional-scale-regime-shifts-for-biodiversity-and-eco
https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biu093
Description
Summary:Current trajectories of global change may lead to regime shifts at regional scales, driving coupled human-environment systems to highly degraded states in terms of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being. For business-as-usual socioeconomic development pathways, regime shifts are projected to occur within the next several decades, to be difficult to reverse, and to have regional- to global-scale impacts on human society. We provide an overview of ecosystem, socioeconomic, and biophysical mechanisms mediating regime shifts and illustrate how these interact at regional scales by aggregation, synergy, and spreading processes. We give detailed examples of interactions for terrestrial ecosystems of central South America and for marine and coastal ecosystems of Southeast Asia. This analysis suggests that degradation of biodiversity and, ecosystem services over the twenty-first century could be far greater than was previously predicted. We identify key policy and management opportunities at regional to global scales to avoid these shifts.

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