At-risk marine biodiversity faces extensive, expanding, and intensifying human impacts.

Marine Conservation Human activities are increasingly affecting the marine environment but understanding how much and in what ways is an extreme challenge given the vastness of this system. O'Hara et al. looked at a suite of human-induced stressors on >1000 marine species over the course of 13 years. They found that species are experiencing increasing levels of stress over more than half of their ranges, with some species having an even higher proportion of their ranges affected. Fishing has the largest impact, but other stressors, such as climate change, are also important and growing. Science , this issue p. [84][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abe6731

Quantitative assessment of the relative impacts of climate change and human activity on flood susceptibility based on a cloud model

The COVID19 pandemic has served as a salutary reminder of the potential fragility of our relationship with nature. It has forced us as individuals to accept unprecedented constraints on our ability to go about our everyday business, including not least our ability to travel long distances by car or on a plane, while governments have found themselves intervening in the economy in a fashion not seen since wartime. The decline in air pollution that has occurred in the wake of less movement across the globe has reminded us of the impact that our economic activity has on the environment. Yet, despite the fact that there is widespread concern in Britain about the impact of climate change, it will not necessarily be easy in the post-COVID world to persuade voters to take the individual actions or support the collective policies that are widely thought necessary to reverse the increase in global temperatures. In this paper, we examine recent attitudes towards climate change as revealed by a number of polls and surveys conducted during the course of the last decade. We begin by examining how many voters are concerned about climate change and whether concern has become more commonplace. We then turn to the crucial issue of the extent to which people believe that climate change/global warming are the product of human activity, and where responsibility for tacking action to deal with it is thought to lie. Thereafter, we examine attitudes towards both the collective and individual actions that might be taken to counteract global warming, and the extent to which these attitudes reflect their level of concern about the impact of human activity on the climate. We conclude by considering the implications for dealing with climate change in the post-COVID world.

Climate change: Will the parties unite or divide?

Integrated impact assessment of climate and socio-economic change on dairy farms in a watershed in the Netherlands

Climate change is a complex and contentious public issue, but the risk-management options available to us are straightforward and have well-characterized strengths and weaknesses.

Despite substantial growth in marine conservation efforts over the past two decades, biodiversity continues to decline. This is due to human activities impacting biodiversity almost everywhere in the ocean, combined with a failure to address the full range of stressors to marine biodiversity. These stressors fall into three broad categories – ocean-based stressors such as fishing, land-based stressors such as nutrient runoff, and anthropogenic climate change stressors such as increasing temperatures.To date, marine conservation efforts have primarily focused on stopping ocean-based stressors, primarily by using marine protected areas (MPAs) which have grown ten-fold since the year 2000. While this growth is promising, effective marine conservation requires not only further expansion of the global MPA estate, but also other measures aimed at ameliorating land-based stressors and climate change. To secure marine biodiversity into the future, these measures must be used as part of a multi-faceted strategy that secures imperilled species, facilitates recovery of already degraded ecosystems, and preserves places free from intense human activity. This thesis draws on decision science to provide scientific guidance and planning methods for this type of multi-faceted marine conservation strategy that addresses the full range of stressors to biodiversity.Given the severe impact climate change is already having on biodiversity, it is crucial that marine conservation approaches consider and plan for the impacts of climate change, now and into the future. Despite this imperative, there have been no assessments of how climate change is being incorporated into conservation planning. In Chapter 2 I address this gap by reviewing conservation planning approaches to assess if and how they incorporate climate change. I discover that the vast majority of approaches do not consider climate change at all, and those that do often rely on uncertain forecasts of future climate or species distributions. By summarising the benefits and weaknesses of various approaches, this review highlights future research needs to improve marine conservation action in the face of multiple threats including climate change.Chapter 2 showed that an important approach for incorporating climate change into conservation planning is to identify and protect those places or ecosystems that will be most resilient to change. Due to their intact nature, marine ‘wilderness areas’ (those places free from intense human impacts) are well-placed to resist and recover from the impacts of climate change, yet there has been no systematic identification of these areas in the ocean. Inchapter 3 I present a global assessment of marine wilderness and discover that only 13.2% of the ocean remains as wilderness, with most located at extreme latitudes. I also show that most of these wilderness areas are unprotected, highlighting the need for future conservation agreements to recognise the unique values of wilderness and set targets for their retention.While conserving wilderness is a crucial conservation goal, most marine species remain poorly represented in conservation areas, making it clear that future MPA expansion is also vital to conserve marine biodiversity. In chapter 4 I identify priority areas for marine conservation action to meet current representation targets for ~23,000 marine species and complement existing conservation areas. I discover that representing 10% of all mapped marine species ranges will require an additional 8.5 million km2 of conservation areas, an expansion of the existing MPA estate by one-third. To guide conservation action, I then determine if the threats to these priority areas are ocean-based or land-based. Securing these areas through marine and terrestrial management will help protect marine biodiversity and provide a solid foundation for ambitious future conservation goals.Given widespread degradation of the ocean, facilitating ecosystem recovery will be an essential future conservation goal. Using a model of reef fish biomass recovery in the Western Indian Ocean, in chapter 5 I develop conservation planning methods to facilitate rapid recovery of degraded coral reef fisheries, which will help to increase sustainable fisheries yields and increase reef resilience to acute stressors. The results demonstrate that aiming to minimise reef recovery time substantially changes management priorities compared to other common prioritisation approaches. Changing priorities to minimise reef recovery time is likely to require a trade-off against other fishery management and conservation objectives.In chapter 6 I synthesize the findings of this thesis, highlight their implications for conservation practice and policy, and identify priorities for future research. Given the unparalleled scale and severity of human impacts to the ocean, it is clear that increases in the scope of global conservation strategies are needed to avoid widespread biodiversity declines and maintain ecosystem services. This thesis helps to advance the science needed to develop such strategies and ensure that marine biodiversity, along with the vast suite of benefits humanity derives from it, is preserved in perpetuity.

The streamflow processes of the Poyang Basin are significantly altered due to combined influences from climate changes and human activities,which further triggers higher occurrence frequency of floods and droughts and hence serious water resources problems. In this sense,quantitative evaluations of influences from human activities and climate changes respectively are of greatly theoretical and practical merits in terms of planning and management of water resources. In this study,hydrological models and multivariate regression technique are used to identify quantitatively impacts of climate changes and human activities on streamflow variations of five tributaries of the Poyang Basin. Furthermore,the results are further corroborated by comparisons between the analyses by hydrological models and multivariate regression methods and also sensitivity analysis technique. The explained variables of the multivariate models are done using the adjustment coefficients with different explained variables,showing that the multiple regression models are the right ones with evaporation and the precipitation of the last month. The NASH coefficient for the AWBM model is larger than 0. 842,being better than the modeling results by the multivariate regression models. Meanwhile the impacts modeled by the above-mentioned techniques are similar,and are good for identification of the impacts of human activities and climate changes on streamflow variations. It should be noted here that the sensitivity method cannot exclude the base-period human influences. Due to increase of streamflow as a result of human interferences,the influence component by climate changes is usually exaggerated. Analysis of this study indicates that precipitation,potential evaporation and also human activities have the potential to increase the streamflow of the Poyang Basin and the fractional contribution is 27% and 73%,respectively. Climate changes can increase the streamflow of these five rivers considered in this study. Human activities increase the streamflow of the rivers except Fu River basin. In the Fu River basin,the streamflow decreases due to massive agricultural irrigation. Different influences can be identified for climate changes and human activities on tributaries of the Poyang Basin. Climate change is the major driving factor for the increase of the streamflow within the Rao,Xin and Gan River basins; however,human activity is the principle driving factor behind the increase of the streamflow of the Xiu River basin and also the decrease of the streamflow of Fu River basin. Meanwhile,different impacts of human activities and climate changes on streamflow variations are distinctly different on various temporal scales. On the annual time scale,increase of streamflow is large due to climate changes and human activities during 1970s- 1990 s and decrease of streamflow during 2000 s. On the seasonal scale,human activities can well increase streamflow during dry season(December to February of the subsequent year) and decrease streamflow during wet season(April to June) with the fractional contribution of 78. 9% and 82. 7% respectively. On the monthly scale,different influences of climate changes and human activities can be detected. Climate change is the main factor for the decrease of streamflow during May to June and human activities for the decrease of streamflow during February to May. The results of this study can provide theoretical ground for basin-scale water resources management under the influences of climate changes and human activities.

Agriculture production is directly dependent on climate change and weather. Possible changes in temperature, precipitation and CO2 concentration are expected to significantly impact crop growth and ultimately we lose our crop productivity and indirectly affect the sustainable food availability issue. The overall impact of climate change on worldwide food production is considered to be low to moderate with successful adaptation and adequate irrigation. Climate change has a serious impact on the availability of various resources on the earth especially water, which sustains life on this planet. The global food security situation and outlook remains delicately imbalanced amid surplus food production and the prevalence of hunger, due to the complex interplay of social, economic, and ecological factors that mediate food security outcomes at various human and institutional scales. Weather aberration poses complex challenges in terms of increased variability and risk for food producers and the energy and water sectors. Changes in the biosphere, biodiversity and natural resources are adversely affecting human health and quality of life. Throughout the 21st century, India is projected to experience warming above global level. India will also begin to experience more seasonal variation in temperature with more warming in the winters than summers. Longevity of heat waves across India has extended in recent years with warmer night temperatures and hotter days, and this trend is expected to continue. Strategic research priorities are outlined for a range of sectors that underpin global food security, including: agriculture, ecosystem services from agriculture, climate change, international trade, water management solutions, the water-energy-food security nexus, service delivery to smallholders and women farmers, and better governance models and regional priority setting. There is a need to look beyond agriculture and invest in affordable and suitable farm technologies if the problem of food insecurity is to be addressed in a sustainable manner. Introduction Globally, agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. This vulnerability is relatively higher in India in view of the large population depending on agriculture and poor coping capabilities of small and marginal farmers. Impacts of climate change pose a serious threat to food security. “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (World Food Summit, 1996). This definition gives rise to four dimensions of food security: availability of food, accessibility (economically and physically), utilization (the way it is used and assimilated by the human body) and stability of these three dimensions. According to the United Nations, in 2015, there are still 836 million people in the world living in extreme poverty (less than USD1.25/day) (UN, 2015). And according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), at least 70 percent of the very poor live in rural areas, most of them depending partly (or completely) on agriculture for their livelihoods. It is estimated that 500 million smallholder farms in the developing world are supporting almost 2 billion people, and in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa these small farms produce about 80 percent of the food consumed. Climate change threatens to reverse the progress made so far in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. As highlighted by the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), climate change augments and intensifies risks to food security for the most vulnerable countries and populations. Few of the major risks induced by climate change, as identified by IPCC have direct consequences for food security (IPCC, 2007). These are mainly to loss of rural livelihoods and income, loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, livelihoods loss of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems and food insecurity (breakdown of food systems). Rural farmers, whose livelihood depends on the use of natural resources, are likely to bear the brunt of adverse impacts. Most of the crop simulation model runs and experiments under elevated temperature and carbon dioxide indicate that by 2030, a 3-7% decline in the yield of principal cereal crops like rice and wheat is likely in India by adoption of current production technologies. Global warming impacts growth, reproduction and yields of food and horticulture crops, increases crop water requirement, causes more soil erosion, increases thermal stress on animals leading to decreased milk yields and change the distribution and breeding season of fisheries. Fast changing climatic conditions, shrinking land, water and other natural resources with rapid growing population around the globe has put many challenges before us (Mukherjee, 2014). Food is going to be second most challenging issue for mankind in time to come. India will also begin to experience more seasonal variation in temperature with more warming in the winters than summers (Christensen et al., 2007). Climate change is posing a great threat to agriculture and food security in India and it's subcontinent. Water is the most critical agricultural input in India, as 55% of the total cultivated areas do not have irrigation facilities. Currently we are able to secure food supplies under these varying conditions. Under the threat of climate variability, our food grain production system becomes quite comfortable and easily accessible for local people. India's food grain production is estimated to rise 2 per cent in 2020-21 crop years to an all-time high of 303.34 million tonnes on better output of rice, wheat, pulse and coarse cereals amid good monsoon rains last year. In the 2019-20 crop year, the country's food grain output (comprising wheat, rice, pulses and coarse cereals) stood at a record 297.5 million tonnes (MT). Releasing the second advance estimates for 2020-21 crop year, the agriculture ministry said foodgrain production is projected at a record 303.34 MT. As per the data, rice production is pegged at record 120.32 MT as against 118.87 MT in the previous year. Wheat production is estimated to rise to a record 109.24 MT in 2020-21 from 107.86 MT in the previous year, while output of coarse cereals is likely to increase to 49.36 MT from 47.75 MT. Pulses output is seen at 24.42 MT, up from 23.03 MT in 2019-20 crop year. In the non-foodgrain category, the production of oilseeds is estimated at 37.31 MT in 2020-21 as against 33.22 MT in the previous year. Sugarcane production is pegged at 397.66 MT from 370.50 MT in the previous year, while cotton output is expected to be higher at 36.54 million bales (170 kg each) from 36.07. This production figure seem to be sufficient for current population, but we need to improve more and more with vertical farming and advance agronomic and crop improvement tools for future burgeoning population figure under the milieu of climate change issue. Our rural mass and tribal people have very limited resources and they sometime complete depend on forest microhabitat. To order to ensure food and nutritional security for growing population, a new strategy needs to be initiated for growing of crops in changing climatic condition. The country has a large pool of underutilized or underexploited fruit or cereals crops which have enormous potential for contributing to food security, nutrition, health, ecosystem sustainability under the changing climatic conditions, since they require little input, as they have inherent capabilities to withstand biotic and abiotic stress. Apart from the impacts on agronomic conditions of crop productions, climate change also affects the economy, food systems and wellbeing of the consumers (Abbade, 2017). Crop nutritional quality become very challenging, as we noticed that, zinc and iron deficiency is a serious global health problem in humans depending on cereal-diet and is largely prevalent in low-income countries like Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and South-east Asia. We report inefficiency of modern-bred cultivars of rice and wheat to sequester those essential nutrients in grains as the reason for such deficiency and prevalence (Debnath et al., 2021). Keeping in mind the crop yield and nutritional quality become very daunting task to our food security issue and this can overcome with the proper and time bound research in cognizance with the environment. Threat and challenges In recent years, climate change has become a debatable issue worldwide. South Asia will be one of the most adversely affected regions in terms of impacts of climate change on agricultural yield, economic activity and trading policies. Addressing climate change is central for global future food security and poverty alleviation. The approach would need to implement strategies linked with developmental plans to enhance its adaptive capacity in terms of climate resilience and mitigation. Over time, there has been a visible shift in the global climate change initiative towards adaptation. Adaptation can complement mitigation as a cost-effective strategy to reduce climate change risks. The impact of climate change is projected to have different effects across societies and countries. Mitigation and adaptation actions can, if appropriately designed, advance sustainable development and equity both within and across countries and between generations. One approach to balancing the attention on adaptation and mitigation strategies is to compare the costs and benefits of both the strategies. The most imminent change is the increase in the atmospheric temperatures due to increase levels of GHGs (Green House Gases) i.e. carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) etc into the atmosphere. The global mean annual temperatures at the end of the 20th

Weather changes all the time. It is highly dynamic in nature. The average pattern of weather, called climate, usually remains uniform for centuries if it is left to itself. However, the Earth is not being left alone. People are taking multidimensional actions that are gradually changing the morphology, physiology and anatomy of the planet Earth and its climate in large scale. The single human activity that is most likely to have a large impact on the climate is the burning of ‘fossil fuels’ such as coal, oil and natural gas. These fuels contain carbon. Burning them liberates carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. Since the early 1800s, when people started burning large amounts of coal and oil, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased by nearly 30 %, and average global temperature appears to have risen between 1 and 2 °F. This increment of temperature is keenly related to the basic property of the gas. Carbon dioxide gas traps solar heat in the atmosphere, partly in the same way as glass traps solar heat in a sunroom or a greenhouse. For this reason, carbon dioxide is sometimes called a ‘greenhouse gas’. As more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, solar heat faces more trouble in getting out. The result is that, if everything else remains unchanged, the average temperature of the atmosphere would increase. With increased rate of industrialization and urbanization, the demand for fossil-fuel-based energy has hiked up. As people burn more fossil fuels for energy, they add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This creates a blanket of carbon dioxide over the Earth’s surface, which allows only the short waves of the sun to penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, but prevents the long-wave radiations (emitted from the Earth’s surface) to get out. If this activity continues for a long period of time, the average temperature of the atmosphere will almost certainly rise. This is commonly referred to as global warming. Global warming is thus the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation. The term ‘global warming’ is a subset of the universal set climate change, which also encompasses another subset called ‘global cooling’. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) uses the term ‘climate change’ for human-induced changes and ‘climate variability’ for other changes. Climate change is therefore any long-term significant change in the ‘average weather’ that a given region experiences and involves changes in the variability or average state of the atmosphere over durations ranging from decades to millions of years. The roots of these changes can be related to several dynamic processes on Earth, external forces including variations in sunlight intensity and more recently by human activities.

Catchments in the future North: interdisciplinary science for sustainable management in the 21^st Century

Professor Lord Hunt, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to open this important scientific meeting on the impacts of climate change on urban areas. As you know, the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion supports the view that human activities are changing the Earth's climate. There really

Human pressure on the environment and climate change are two important factors contributing to species decline and overall loss of biodiversity. Orchids may be particularly vulnerable to human-induced losses of habitat and the pervasive impact of global climate change. In this study, we simulated the extent of the suitable habitat of three species of the terrestrial orchid genus Cypripedium in northeast China and assessed the impact of human pressure and climate change on the future distribution of these species. Cypripedium represents a genus of long-lived terrestrial orchids that contains several species with great ornamental value. Severe habitat destruction and overcollection have led to major population declines in recent decades. Our results showed that at present the most suitable habitats of the three species can be found in Da Xing’an Ling, Xiao Xing’an Ling and in the Changbai Mountains. Human activity was predicted to have the largest impact on species distributions in the Changbai Mountains. In addition, climate change was predicted to lead to a shift in distribution towards higher elevations and to an increased fragmentation of suitable habitats of the three investigated Cypripedium species in the study area. These results will be valuable for decision makers to identify areas that are likely to maintain viable Cypripedium populations in the future and to develop conservation strategies to protect the remaining populations of these enigmatic orchid species.

Biodiversity is very important for the sustainable development of the ocean. Marine biodiversity is closely related to the three pillars of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental). It supports the healthy operation of the earth and provides various services to promote human health, well-being and prosperity. Nowadays, human activities and climate change threaten the marine biodiversity all over the world, and human activities are also very relevant to global climate change. This paper discussed the impact of human activities on marine biodiversity by the archival research method. This paper expounds the impact and mechanism of various human activities on marine diversity from the aspects of overfishing, mariculture, marine garbage, noise pollution and climate change. We found that different human activities have completely different effects on the biodiversity, and even the same human activity can have different effects on marine biodiversity from multiple angles. By reviewing these scientific research results, it is proved that human activities have a great impact on marine biodiversity, and most of them are negative. No matter how different their impact mechanisms are, they will endanger marine biodiversity to varying degrees. This conclusion can make people understand the current situation of marine organisms, establish their awareness of marine environmental protection, and realize the significance of marine biodiversity and marine protection.

Predicting the impact of climate change and human activities on river systems is imperative for effective management of aquatic ecosystems. Unique information can be derived that is critical to the survival of aquatic species under dynamic environmental conditions. Therefore, the response of a tropical river system under climate and land-use changes from the aspects of water temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration were evaluated. Nine designed projected climate change scenarios and three future land-use scenarios were integrated into the Hydrological Simulation Program FORTRAN (HSPF) model to determine the impact of climate change and land-use on water temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration using basin-wide simulation of river system in Malaysia. The model performance coefficients showed a good correlation between simulated and observed streamflow, water temperature, and DO concentration in a monthly time step simulation. The Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency for streamflow was 0.88 for the calibration period and 0.82 for validation period. For water temperature and DO concentration, data from three stations were calibrated and the Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency for both water temperature and DO ranged from 0.53 to 0.70. The output of the calibrated model under climate change scenarios show that increased rainfall and air temperature do not affects DO concentration and water temperature as much as the condition of a decrease in rainfall and increase in air temperature. The regression model on changes in streamflow, DO concentration, and water temperature under the climate change scenarios illustrates that scenarios that produce high to moderate streamflow, produce small predicted change in water temperatures and DO concentrations compared with the scenarios that produced a low streamflow. It was observed that climate change slightly affects the relationship between water temperatures and DO concentrations in the tropical rivers that we include in this study. This study demonstrates the potential impact of climate and future land-use changes on tropical rivers and how they might affect the future ecological systems. Most rivers in suburban areas will be ecologically unsuitable to some aquatic species. In comparison, rivers surrounded by agricultural and forestlands are less affected by the projected climate and land-uses changes. The results from this study provide a basis in which resource management and mitigation actions can be developed.