Abstract
There is a pressing need to assess resilience of coastal ecosystems against sea level rise. To develop appropriate response strategies against future climate disturbances, it is important to estimate the magnitude of disturbances that these ecosystems can absorb and to better understand their underlying processes. Hammocks (petenes) coastal ecosystems are highly vulnerable to sea level rise linked to climate change; their vulnerability is mainly due to its close relation with the sea through underground drainage in predominantly karstic soils. Hammocks are biologically important because of their high diversity and restricted distribution. This study proposes a strategy to assess resilience of this coastal ecosystem when high-precision data are scarce. Approaches and methods used to derive ecological resilience maps of hammocks are described and assessed. Resilience models were built by incorporating and weighting appropriate indicators of persistence to assess hammocks resilience against flooding due to climate change at “Los Petenes Biosphere Reserve”, in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. According to the analysis, 25% of the study area is highly resilient (hot spots), whereas 51% has low resilience (cold spots). The most significant hot spot clusters of resilience were located in areas distant to the coastal zone, with indirect tidal influence, and consisted mostly of hammocks surrounded by basin mangrove and floodplain forest. This study revealed that multi-criteria analysis and the use of GIS for qualitative, semi-quantitative and statistical spatial analyses constitute a powerful tool to develop ecological resilience maps of coastal ecosystems that are highly vulnerable to sea level rise, even when high-precision data are not available. This method can be applied in other sites to help develop resilience analyses and decision-making processes for management and conservation of coastal areas worldwide.
Highlights
There is evidence that climate change, in particular sea level rise (SLR), will have a significant impact on coastal ecosystems, those that are already threatened by other anthropogenic disturbances, and Mexican coastal ecosystems are not an exception [1]
The assessment of the exposure criterion showed that most of the Los Petenes Biosphere Reserve” (LPBR) has a low risk for the indicators “sea flooding due to SLR scenarios” (95.1% scored 1, 2.8% scored 2, 2.1% scored 3) and “Land cover change (LCC)” (47.6% scored 1, 26.8% scored 2, 25.6% scored 3)
A resilience index was developed based on qualitative and quantitative data to assess the magnitude of estimated future SLR disturbances on a coastal ecosystem due to climate change
Summary
There is evidence that climate change, in particular sea level rise (SLR), will have a significant impact on coastal ecosystems, those that are already threatened by other anthropogenic disturbances, and Mexican coastal ecosystems are not an exception [1]. According to the Fifth National Communication of Mexico to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of 2012, the sea surface temperature in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mexican Pacific may rise between 1 and 2°C by 2020; and in general, the climate of Mexico will be between 2 and 4°C warmer around 2050 [2] This warming of sea water could trigger a SLR between 20 and 165 cm, as well as changes in rainfall, storm, and hurricane patterns, which would bring about the flooding of many cities and coastal areas in the country [3]. LPBR is a long, narrow coastal strip covering an area of 2,829 km in two zones: a land area of 1,009 km and a marine portion of 1,819 km (Fig 1)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
