Environmental Causes and Consequences: Defaunation and climate change. The defaunation impacts the ecological structures and ecosystem functions/services, such as the patterns of species’ evolution, the abundance, the ecology of biomes, the changes in nutrient cycles and water quality. In tropical freshwater ecosystems, the risk increases, since the number of endangered animals in these places is nine times higher than that of animals in marine ecosystems. Solutions: Development of well-planned local conservation management models and their execution as a strategy to face extinction and/or mitigate the process and face the environmental crisis. |
2. Reference:
Medina & Barbosa (2016)
|
Place of coverage: Pará, Brazil |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Increased inventory pressure through the acquisition of equipment with higher capturing capacity or due to increase in time of work. Solutions: Fishing agreements or norms with clearly defined objectives. |
3. Reference:
Vidal et al. (2015)
|
Place of coverage: Floodplain ecosystems in the central region of the Amazon Basin |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Increased fishing effort results in declining fish stocks, gradual decline in the average length of the captured species and successive elimination of larger specimens. |
Solutions: Projects for the management of natural resources in socio-economically and environmentally sustainable ways. Fishing agreements that limit access, season, type, and size of fishing gear used, or join these aspects together. |
4. Reference:
Medeiros & Silva (2015)
|
Place of coverage: Marajó Island, Pará, Brazil |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Increased traffic in rivers and predatory exploitation leads to fish shortages. |
Solutions: The possibility of multiple activities with multi-purpose fishermen, or those who adapt to the seasonal conditions of the ecosystem performing other activities such as collecting wild products, developing small scale agriculture, jute farming, and some hunting as well as subsistence and commercial fishing. |
5. Reference:
Oviedo & Crossa (2013)
|
Place of coverage: Acre, Brazil |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: The closure, sedimentation and continuous silting of the lake due to the annual cycle of floods. Increased fishing efforts have led to changes in these ecosystems, directly affecting species such as the pirarucu due to their sedentary behavior. Solutions: Strategies that include technical norms of management, new methods of evaluation, the monitoring of the management with the effective participation of the fishermen in the elaboration of the management measures for preservation and conservation. As a shortcoming, the authors highlight the lack of knowledge about the potential of stocks due to lack of data and applied research. |
6. Reference:
Figueiredo (2013)
|
Place of coverage: Amazonas |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Climate change and large-scale fishing combined with artifices used in pirarucu fishing may affect biological communities. |
Solutions: Management of fishery resources with multilateral actions by the State and fishermen involving complex and multi-level socio-ecological management systems; the evolution of conventional fisheries management systems with the inclusion of social processes, opting for adaptive management, which should adjust to uncertainties and include different local, technical and scientific perspectives and knowledge, including the users in the problem-solving and decision making processes; increasing investment in the conservation and preservation of environments and the constant awareness raising in the communities about the importance of protecting their lakes and streams, as well as a greater presence of the organ monitoring the reserve. There is a lack of studies on the role played by the pirarucu in the ecosystem and the uncertainties regarding the size, composition and spatial distribution of fish stocks, their dynamics, and information on the populations, which interferes with the sustainable management. |
7. Reference:
Kirsten et al. (2012)
|
Place of coverage: Mato Grosso, Brazil |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: lack of management and of studies on the stocks’ situation, together with the exploitation by other groups (tourists and indigenous fishermen) and the use of nets, has led to overexploitation, compromising local pirarucu stocks. Solutions: Deployment of management. The highlighted shortcomings were the lack of studies on fishing, ecology and conservation efforts of the species in the region and the absence of management plans. |
8. Reference:
Lawler (2009)
|
Place of coverage: Aquatic ecosystems in general |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Climate change will cause the water temperature to rise and result in changes in the distribution of species including, for example, the potential loss of fish in the streams. |
Solutions: Increasing connectivity between reserves to help augment resilience by providing more opportunities for different locations in which species or communities can persist. Possessing reserves with a greater potential for possible habitat heterogeneity, which would help to respond to any future climatic scenario. Active or passive adaptive management are cited as a critical approach to deal with change, as it allows management of highly uncertain systems. Passive adaptive management involves the construction of a management strategy based on historical data and when new data is obtained, from the monitoring over time, this allows the inclusion of new strategies and assets by involving conscious experimentation, generally exploring the results of multiple strategies of this management. But barriers such as the lack of flexibility and the institutional capacity to perceive the risks of failures, the high degree of uncertainties, large temporal and long management scales, must be overcome. |
9. Reference:
Erwin (2009)
|
Place of coverage: Aquatic ecosystems in general |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Global climate change coupled with a host of other pressures may result in increased spread of alien species and, consequently, greater pressure on the river basins. Generalized stress and spatial deviation can wipe out swamp areas, threatening the survival of species, the health of the natural systems, and the integrity of ecosystems. |
Solutions: Use of integrated modeling in the restoration of wetlands, in the adaptive management, and in plans at the level of mega river basins. The gaps to be overcome include the little discussion on wetland restoration and climate change, lack of monitoring, which is essential for the ecosystem management, as it intends to detect long-term changes in the ecosystem, provides insights on possible ecological consequences, and helps decision-makers to determine how management practices should be implemented. |
10. Reference:
Palmer et al. (2008)
|
Place of coverage: Aquatic ecosystems in general |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Drastic changes in flow, increased demand for water related to economic and population growth, which may have effects even be greater than climate change on the water available to many rivers, leading to biodiversity loss. |
Solutions: Specific actions of restoration, rehabilitation, proactive and active management to improve the resilience of riparian ecosystems and minimize impacts. |
11. Reference:
Bengtsson et al. (2003)
|
Place of coverage: Aquatic ecosystems in general |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: Ecosystems are subject to both natural and man-induced disturbances at various spatial and temporal scales. |
Solutions: Recognize that not just nature, but humans are also part of the ecosystem, so reserves cannot be static, but are part of the management of the adaptive landscape. Although reserves are crucial for the short-term conservation of species and habitats, some of them have not incorporated long term and large-scale dynamics of ecosystems as parts of dynamic landscapes and it is necessary to reconsider how reserves are designed and managed in areas increasingly dominated by humans. |
12. Reference:
Jungwirth et al. (2002)
|
Place of coverage: Aquatic ecosystems in general |
Environmental Causes and Consequences: The intensive use and alteration of riverside landscapes by humans have led to drastic reductions in functional flood plains, loss of typical floodplain elements, alteration of hydrological and temperature regimes, impacting the reduction of biodiversity, spatial-temporal heterogeneity, functional processes and the diversity, density and biomass of species. |
Solutions: To have a political objective of maintaining or restoring the ecological integrity of the riverside landscapes; establish priorities of what must be preserved, mitigated and restored according to the ecological state of the water resource; incorporate new visions of the management of the floodplain that meet the needs of both humans and the natural systems. Use of hydrological, morphological and ecological conditions models to assist in the restoration of complex floodplain systems, as they predict and evaluate the effectiveness of restoration measures. The identified shortcomings are the lack of detailed information on functional relationships and processes in the landscape and catchment scale, which make it difficult to assess their ecological status. |