Page 28 - climate-change2013

Developing a monitoring and evaluation

protocol for the MPA network

Why monitor climate Furthermore, these efforts will contribute to national,
regional and international reporting requirements con-
change effects? cerning biodiversity conservation and the Convention
on Biological Diversity (CBD) targets. For EU countries,
monitoring and the development of adaptive manage-
Mediterranean MPAs are under growing pressure from ment strategies in MPAs could serve as a good basis
both climate change and other anthropogenic influ- for reporting and complying with the recently drafted EU
ences, particularly coastal development. These pres- Strategy on adaptation to climate change (EU COM(2013)
sures require that managers understand and are aware 216) and with the objective of a common framework of
of the environmental changes that are currently occur- action to mitigate and adapt to the changes.
ring and are likely to manifest themselves in the MPA
threatened species or sites and habitats that hold large Designing a monitoring
environment in the near future. Rare, endangered or
climate change, as species will need to move or adapt framework
numbers of species might be particularly vulnerable to
to the changing environmental conditions. Monitor-
ing can be of assistance in identifying these adverse Existing monitoring programmes
effects and providing early warnings. The inclusion of
climate change in standard monitoring programmes There are many monitoring techniques, tools and new
would help in assessing and putting in place appropri- technologies available to measure the environmen-
ate management actions to protect the most resilient tal condition of the seas. In the Mediterranean Sea, a
or least susceptible communities, habitats and areas, number of monitoring activities are conducted by dif-
and in exploring other potential management adapta- ferent national, regional and international scientific and
tion strategies. research organizations. Some are undertaken regularly
while others are one-off studies, and they vary in com-
Because MPAs cover relatively undisturbed environ- plexity, geographical context, duration and the param-
ments in which many important Mediterranean ecosys- eters measured; in many cases the resulting studies
tems are represented, they can also serve as control are difficult for non-specialists to understand. Although
sites for monitoring climate change and its impacts, for several countries have made progress with the devel-
comparison with more disturbed marine and coastal opment of tools for monitoring the marine environment
sites outside protected area boundaries. The use of in general and its climate change-related modifications
MPAs as sentinel sites to produce long-term datasets in particular, there is still no clear vision of the possible
will result in a greater understanding of the natural vari- impacts on MPAs.
ability in the way MPA environments respond to climate
change stressors. Within the framework of marine environment monitoring,
there also exist marked differences between countries
and between individual MPAs themselves in data-gath-
ering activities and monitoring efforts. Some countries
already have monitoring programmes in place, particu-
larly for physical variables, which also cover MPA sites,
although the resulting information is not commonly fed
back to the site managers. Monitoring information on
chemical and biological impacts is less abundant.

Overall, it seems there is a fragmentation of monitoring
efforts at the regional and local scales. Climate change
projections and scenarios are still limited to overviews
at a Mediterranean or global level; to understand the im-
pacts on local sites, however, monitoring data adjusted
to the spatial scale of MPAs is needed.
Monitoring for MPAs

For any potential climate change monitoring programme
to be implemented in these sites, the individual MPAs
already need to be carrying out general monitoring
and surveillance of their habitats and species (includ-
Monitoring. Photo: S. Ruitton - Port Cros National Park ing such variables as area, cover, quality and popula-

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