Incorporating Climate Change into Environmental Risk Assessment
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Understanding the combined effects of global climate change (GCC) and chemical exposures is essential for improving ecological risk assessments of vulnerable ecosystems. Chemical, physical, and biological stressors can interact with GCC at multiple scales presenting a complex system in which to make projections of future ecological risk. Historically, climate change models operated at relatively large spatial and temporal scales leading to challenges in translating the outputs of climate models into inputs for ecological risk assessments.
This presentation describes potential approaches to integrating projected changes in climate-related stressors into an ecological risk assessment framework. General concepts are discussed and illustrated with a case study of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) where a Bayesian network framework was used to assess the integrated risk from GCC and physical, chemical, and biological stressors to coral reefs. Coral reef ecosystems in the GBR are under increasing stress due to climate change pressures associated with rising ocean temperatures, increasing acidification and cyclones. Near shore reef systems of the Mackay Whitsunday coastal zone are particularly at risk to climate change pressures as they are also being impacted by other anthropogenic stressors, including pesticide, nutrient and sediment exposures associated with more frequent and large rainfall events. We found that both climate stressors and these catchment-related stressors pose a risk to these inshore reef systems, with projected increases in coral bleaching and coral mortality under all future climate scenarios. The major risks identified could then be used to assist in the prioritisation of management interventions to build reef resilience for the future.