Assesing the role of Marine Protected Areas facing the climate change in temperate seas

Abstract

Climate change is one of the major current drivers of disturbance in marine coastal ecosystems. To date, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are the most effective tool for marine conservation. However, their efficacy in adapting and mitigating the effects of climate change remains controversial. We conducted a comprehensive literature review of climate change effects and MPAs for the last fifteen years (2005-2019). We restricted our review to benthic species living in temperate rocky habitats, which are hotspots of biodiversity worldwide and are being affected by climate change. The number of papers addressing MPAs and climate change has increased steadily over the past decade. The majority of studies (63%) have been carried out on the west coast of the USA, the Mediterranean and the Australian coast, which comprises only 23 of the 79 temperate ecoregions. In 32% of these ecoregions no work was found. Overall, our results show that evidence is lacking to conclude that MPAs promote a greater resistance and a faster recovery of marine ecosystems, that is, their resilience. To date, just a few articles consider this question, and of those only about half consider that reserves play an important role in adapting and/or mitigating the effects derived from climate crisis. Therefore, we conclude that that sound empirical studies specifically designed to test to what extent MPAs are supporting the resilience of ecosystems the face of climate change are urgently needed to support effective biodiversity conservation