Pressures from human activities are expected to increase substantially, affecting marine ecosystems globally. To plan for a sustainable future, we need to forecast the distributions of cumulative effects from multiple pressures. Here, we mapped (at 10-kilometer resolution) the future cumulative impacts of 10 climate, land-based, fishing, and other pressures on 20 marine habitats under two climate scenarios at mid-century (around 2050). We found that cumulative impacts are projected to increase 2.2 to 2.6 times globally, with coastal habitats facing higher impacts but offshore regions facing faster increases, especially in equatorial regions. Furthermore, many countries dependent on marine resources will have large increases in impacts. Incorporating these results into strategic policy and management will support more sustainable use and protection of marine ecosystems and the services they provide.

Global change will impact the distribution and abundance of predators through a combination of abiotic variables, such as temperature; and biotic variables, such as prey availability. However, there is a poor understanding of how distribution projections with biotic variables differ from those with abiotic variables, particularly in resource‐limited marine systems. We address this knowledge gap using the planktonic larvae of iconic and economically important pelagic fish predators. We leverage a multidecadal, long‐term sampling program from the western Atlantic Ocean to assess the efficacy of using zooplankton prey (copepods, larvaceans and cladocerans) and climate variables to predict the distribution of larvae of seven pelagic fish species, including tunas, billfishes and mahi‐mahi. Zooplankton prey, particularly larvaceans, showed high importance for predicting the distribution of smaller tunas. Temperature showed high importance for true tuna Thunnus spp., billfish and mahi‐mahi. Statistical models linking predator, prey and abiotic variables were forced with climate projections from an ensemble of earth system models to assess zooplankton and fish larvae distribution changes. Redistributions and declines of zooplankton prey led to minimal changes in abundance and distribution for most larval taxa. However, direct climate change effects, driven partially by ocean warming, led to increases in abundance and northward distribution shifts for multiple larval taxa. These climate change–zooplankton–fish larvae relationships highlight that future distribution and abundance changes of predators can be dampened when assessing impacts of prey availability changes. We also show that in a resource‐limited system, key pelagic predators, many of which produce lucrative fisheries, are spatiotemporally linked with their preferred zooplankton prey.

ABSTRACTConservation planning that enhances the resiliency of biodiversity to climate change requires adaptive water and land use decision‐making in the most cost‐efficient way. This has many challenges since landscapes with high biodiversity can embrace intense human production activities, particularly agriculture. Conventionally, water and land used for conservation are often regarded as tradeoffs to agricultural productivity. However, this study found that agricultural water and land use synergize with shorebird conservation in the Central Valley, California. If informed decisions are made to guide strategic land use, landscapes can adapt to climate change and offer multiple benefits. This study used a coupled economic optimization model with a species distribution model to consider human factors in ecological impacts. The objective was to assess the impacts of agricultural water and land use decisions under different climate change scenarios on 10 shorebird species populations in California's Central Valley. Our results showed that strategic water and land management can offer favorable habitats to targeted shorebirds with a land composition including diversified crop categories complementary to wetlands. This study demonstrates that agricultural lands can be as important as wetlands to shorebirds to sustain their migratory stages throughout the year. Wetland restoration without species habitat preference information can lead to population shrinkage since wetland types vary in habitat importance to the shorebird species studied in this research. Business as usual, along with land use and climate change, will decrease shorebirds' breeding season and population to the same degree as they impact non‐breeding populations. The synergies between agricultural production and shorebird conservation were found in the scenarios that favor agricultural production water use but also favor habitat provisioning to shorebirds in the Central Valley, California, under climate change.

The ubiquity of data-limited, data-absent, and unmanaged fisheries around the world illustrates a significant need for enhanced monitoring of living marine resources beyond conventional agency-led programs. While quantitative stock assessments represent the gold standard for fisheries management, simple length-based datasets alone can provide important insights into fishery status and can be collected by citizen and community scientists. Here, we demonstrate the performance of Ocean Ruler, a web-based tool that uses computer vision software and digital edge detection to measure individual lengths of harvested catch from images submitted by users (e.g., fishers, scientists, fisheries managers). Specifically, we compared software-derived measurements to conventional hand measurements to estimate rates of software bias and measurement error across four fishery groups in commercial, recreational, and artisanal fisheries that operate along the coast of California, USA and Baja California, Mexico. Through collaboration with local fishing communities, we demonstrate minimal software bias across three out of the four fishery groups, with minor, yet consistent overestimation observed while using the tool to estimate finfish lengths. We also note that efforts must be made to reduce software measurement error, despite achieving acceptable levels of accuracy on average in many cases. Nevertheless, we believe our efforts represent early successes in integrating machine learning tools with citizen and community science to generate management-relevant fishery size-structure data. Such approaches, when implemented effectively, have the potential to directly support management of living marine resources, particularly in small-scale, data-limited contexts.

Abstract This manuscript shares the lessons learned from providing scientific computing support to over 600 researchers and discipline experts, helping them develop reproducible and scalable analytical workflows to process large amounts of heterogeneous data. When providing scientific computing support, focus is first placed on how to foster the collaborative aspects of multidisciplinary projects on the technological side by providing virtual spaces to communicate and share documents. Then insights on data management planning and how to implement a centralized data management workflow for data‐driven projects are provided. Developing reproducible workflows requires the development of code. We describe tools and practices that have been successful in fostering collaborative coding and scaling on remote servers, enabling teams to iterate more efficiently. We have found short training sessions combined with on‐demand specialized support to be the most impactful combination in helping scientists develop their technical skills. Here we share our experiences in enabling researchers to do science more collaboratively and more reproducibly beyond any specific project, with long‐lasting effects on the way researchers conduct science. We hope that other groups supporting team‐ and data‐driven science (in environmental science and beyond) will benefit from the lessons we have learned over the years through trial and error.

Mariculture is one of the fastest growing global markets. Although it has potential to improve livelihoods and facilitate economic growth, it can negatively impact marine biodiversity. Here we estimate local cumulative environmental impacts from current and future (2050) mariculture production on marine biodiversity (20,013 marine fauna), while accounting for species range shifts under climate change. With strategic planning, the 1.82-fold increase in finfish and 2.36-fold increase in bivalve production needed to meet expected global mariculture demand in 2050 could be achieved with up to a 30.5% decrease in cumulative impact to global marine biodiversity. This is because all future mariculture farms are strategically placed in sea areas with the lowest cumulative impact. Our results reveal where and how much mariculture impacts could change in the coming decades and identify pathways for countries to minimize risks under expansion of mariculture and climate change through strategic planning.

Clonal demographic traits play important roles in regulating community dynamics. Yet, it remains unclear how the responses of these clonal traits to drought might depend on previous drought exposure, and how drought responses vary among grasslands. We conducted a repeated drought experiment across four grasslands along an aridity gradient in northern China. We assessed the effects of single (precipitation reduction in 2021-2022) versus recurrent (precipitation reduction in 2015-2018 and 2021-2022) drought on bud density, shoot density, and the ratio of bud to shoot density. Drought reduced bud density at all grasslands and shoot density at most grasslands. Drought reduced the ratio of bud-to-shoot density only in the most arid grasslands. Recurrent drought had larger negative effects than a single drought on bud density and composition of bud and shoot at only one of four grasslands, and on shoot density at two of four grasslands. Our results suggest that previous drought exposure can alter the response of plant clonal demographic traits to subsequent drought in some but not all grasslands, and that responses can vary with mean climate.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely implemented tools for long‐term ocean conservation and resource management. Assessments of MPA performance have largely focused on specific ecosystems individually and have rarely evaluated performance across multiple ecosystems either in an individual MPA or across an MPA network. We evaluated the conservation performance of 59 MPAs in California's large MPA network, which encompasses 4 primary ecosystems (surf zone, kelp forest, shallow reef, deep reef) and 4 bioregions, and identified MPA attributes that best explain performance. Using a meta‐analytic framework, we evaluated the ability of MPAs to conserve fish biomass, richness, and diversity. At the scale of the network and for 3 of 4 regions, the biomass of species targeted by fishing was positively associated with the level of regulatory protection and was greater inside no‐take MPAs, whereas species not targeted by fishing had similar biomass in MPAs and areas open to fishing. In contrast, species richness and diversity were not as strongly enhanced by MPA protection. The key features of conservation effectiveness included MPA age, preimplementation fisheries pressure, and habitat diversity. Important drivers of MPA effectiveness for single MPAs were consistent across MPAs in the network, spanning regions and ecosystems. With international targets aimed at protecting 30% of the world's oceans by 2030, MPA design and assessment frameworks should consider conservation performance at multiple ecologically relevant scales, from individual MPAs to MPA networks.