Abstract
Local drivers are human activities or processes that occur in specific locations, and cause physical or ecological change at the local or regional scale. Here, we consider marine and land-derived pollution, non-indigenous species, tourism and other human visits, exploitation of marine resources, recovery of marine mammals, and coastal change as a result of ice loss, in terms of their historic and current extent, and their interactions with the Southern Ocean environment. We summarise projected increases or decreases in the influence of local drivers, and projected changes to their geographic range, concluding that the influence of non-indigenous species, fishing, and the recovery of marine mammals are predicted to increase in the future across the Southern Ocean. Local drivers can be managed regionally, and we identify existing governance frameworks as part of the Antarctic Treaty System and other instruments which may be employed to mitigate or limit their impacts on Southern Ocean ecosystems.
Highlights
The environment and ecosystems of the Southern Ocean are influenced by phenomena such as atmospheric and oceanic circulation acting at a global scale, as well as by human activities or processes that cause physical or ecological change in specific locations
This paper focuses on the ten Antarctic and sub-Antarctic Marine Ecosystem Assessment of the Southern Ocean (MEASO) areas which broadly cover the area managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) (Figure 2)
The risk from point sources of pollution is highest on the northwest Antarctic Peninsula as this area has the highest human footfall including 35 coastal research stations (46% of the total number of research stations across the Antarctic continent) (COMNAP, 2017), and all of the top twenty most visited Antarctic tourist sites, which accounted for 68% of all landings in the 2017/18 season (IAATO, 2018)
Summary
The environment and ecosystems of the Southern Ocean are influenced by phenomena such as atmospheric and oceanic circulation acting at a global scale, as well as by human activities or processes that cause physical or ecological change in specific locations. All human activities in the Southern Ocean, other than whaling, are regulated under the instruments of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) While this management aims to minimise impacts to the environment (Hughes et al, 2018), and to assess the cumulative impacts and interactions of both local and global drivers and their projected trends, this has not yet been fully achieved in practice. This is due in part to the separate consideration of different human activities by different components of the ATS (Grant et al, 2013), as well as a lack of integrated consideration of the effects of global drivers such as temperature, ocean circulation or sea ice extent within management frameworks (CCAMLR, 2017). We identify existing governance frameworks as part of the ATS and other instruments that have specific relevance to local drivers, and which may be employed to mitigate or limit their impacts on Southern Ocean ecosystems (Lee and Chown, 2007)
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