Abstract
The sustainable use of natural resources is critical for addressing the global challenges of today. Strategies for sustainable harvesting need to consider not only harvested species, but also other non-harvested species interacting with them in the same ecosystem. In addition, environmental variation needs to be considered, with climate change currently being one of the main sources of this variation. Understanding the consequences of complex interactions between different drivers and processes affecting dynamics of species and ecosystems across spatial scales requires large-scale integrative research projects. The Norwegian research initiative “Sustainable management of renewable resources in a changing environment: an integrated approach across ecosystems” (SUSTAIN) was launched to fill knowledge gaps related to the sustainable management of populations and ecosystems experiencing climate change. SUSTAIN investigated terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems in boreal and Arctic regions, using both theoretical developments and empirical analyses of long-term data. This Climate Research Special contains both synthesis articles and original research exemplifying some of the approaches used in SUSTAIN. In this introduction we highlight 4 key topics addressed by SUSTAIN: (i) population structure, (ii) interactions between species, (iii) spatial processes, and (iv) adaptive management. These topics are fundamental to the understanding of harvested species from an ecosystem perspective, and to ecosystem-based management approaches, which we are striving to work towards.
Highlights
Published January 13 OPEN ACCESSSustainable management of populations impacted by harvesting and climate change Nils Chr
Sustainable use of natural resources is critical for addressing the global challenges of today, not least because exploitation of nature has put humanity in a critical situation due to severe degradation of ecosystems (IPBES 2019)
SUSTAIN investigated terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems in boreal and Arctic regions (Fig. 1), and was organized around seven case studies within these 3 main ecosystems, including: (1) semi-domestic reindeer in alpine and sub-arctic ecosystems, (2) reindeer, rock ptarmigan and arctic fox in high-arctic tundra, (3) willow ptarmigan in sub-arctic and low-arctic tundra, (4) increasing red fox populations in a tundra ecosystem, (5) moose and small game in boreal forests, (6) fish stocks in the Mjøsa lake, and (7) fish stocks in the Barents Sea. The work included both theoretical developments and empirical analyses of long-term data. This Climate Research Special contains both synthesis articles of the overall work done within SUSTAIN and original research articles that exemplify some of the approaches that were employed
Summary
Sustainable use of natural resources is critical for addressing the global challenges of today, not least because exploitation of nature has put humanity in a critical situation due to severe degradation of ecosystems (IPBES 2019). This Climate Research Special contains both synthesis articles of the overall work done within SUSTAIN and original research articles that exemplify some of the approaches that were employed In this introduction we highlight 4 key topics addressed by SUSTAIN, and emphasized in the articles included in this Climate Research Special: (i) population structure, (ii) interactions between species, (iii) spatial processes, and (iv) adaptive management. These topics are fundamental to the understanding of harvested species from an ecosystem perspective, and to developing ecosystem-based management approaches
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