Impacts of El Nino events on ecosystem services provided by Colombian mangroves

目前热带太平洋地区的厄尔尼诺Niño事件预计将是有记录以来最强的两个事件之一。越来越多的证据表明，厄尔尼诺Niño-Southern涛动（ENSO）与气候变化之间存在联系。气候变化正在给许多生态系统带来越来越大的压力，使它们和依赖它们谋生的社区更容易受到强厄尔尼诺Niño事件的影响，例如2015/ 2016年的事件。红树林保护已被提出作为一种基于生态系统的适应（EBA）形式，以帮助在气候变化面前保护生计，为生物多样性和当地社区提供共同利益。然而，如果厄尔尼诺和Niña极端事件的影响威胁到红树林系统的生存和功能及其社会经济后果，这一战略可能会失效。因此，特别迫切需要量化El Niño对红树林的影响及其对当地社区的社会经济后果；当前的El Niño事件提供了获得这些关键基线数据的短暂机会。哥伦比亚正受到厄尔尼诺现象的严重影响。沿海地区的数据缺乏，但El Niño和La Niña对易受干旱和洪水影响地区的沿海社区的影响非常严重，鱼类短缺，红树林系统退化。红树林提供一系列支持生计的生态系统服务，包括提供渔业、木材、农业和运输等服务，以及调节防洪、沉积物调节、侵蚀调节和碳储存等服务。红树林的状况及其与人类福祉和减贫的密切联系为量化厄尔尼诺事件的更广泛影响提供了独特的机会。我们将与哥伦比亚的Grupo Laera和INVEMAR合作，量化目前的El Niño事件对哥伦比亚两个对比鲜明的红树林系统的红树林的影响——面向大海的La Boquilla是一个相对高能量系统，而Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta （CGSM）是一个低能量的泻湖系统。我们将与合作伙伴合作，收集有关红树林系统状况和以下生态系统服务的经验数据：渔业、洪水和侵蚀调节以及沉积物调节。我们将把这些数据与当前厄尔Niño事件的经济和社会影响的定量和定性数据结合起来，并以哥伦比亚海洋和海岸研究所（INVEMAR）维持的一系列监测站的时间序列环境数据作为补充。我们将结合市场和空间价值转移方法，从红树林中获得与关键生态系统服务相关的经济价值。我们将与当地社区团体和利益相关者（通过研讨会）合作，将红树林的生态和物理特性模型发展和完善为综合生态经济模型，并使用基于未来情景的方法来研究各种人为压力和红树林内部变化对生态系统和生计的影响。这项工作将加强当前哥伦比亚厄尔尼诺Niño事件影响的环境和社会经济证据基础，并通过开发共同制作的模型，有助于更好地了解这些系统及其所支持的生计对该地区未来厄尔尼诺Niño事件的抵御能力。

The current El Niño event in the tropical Pacific region is forecast to be one of the two strongest since records began. There is increasing evidence of links between the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and climate change. Climate change is putting increasing pressure on many ecosystems, making them and the communities that depend on them for their livelihoods more susceptible strong El Niño events, such as the 2015/16 event. Mangrove conservation has been proposed as a form of Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA) to help protect livelihoods in the face of climate change, providing co-benefits for biodiversity and local communities. However, this strategy may be rendered ineffective if the impacts of extreme El Nino and La Niña events threaten the survival and functioning of mangrove systems and their socio-economic consequences. It is therefore particularly urgent to quantify the impacts of El Niño on mangroves and their socio-economic consequences on the local communities; the current El Niño event provides a transient opportunity to obtain these critical baseline data.Colombia is being affected severely by El Nino. There is a dearth of data for coastal regions, yet the impacts of both El Niño and La Niña on coastal communities in areas vulnerable to both droughts and floods have been severe, with shortages of fish and degradation of mangrove systems. Mangroves provide a range of ecosystem services that support livelihoods, including provisioning services such as fisheries, wood, agriculture and transportation, and regulating services such as flood protection, sediment regulation, erosion regulation and carbon storage. The status of mangroves and their intimate link to human well-being and poverty alleviation provides a unique opportunity to quantify the broader impacts of El Nino events. In partnership with Grupo Laera and INVEMAR in Colombia, we will quantify the impacts of the current El Niño event on mangroves in two contrasting mangrove systems in Colombia - La Boquilla, which is a relatively high energy system, facing the open sea, and Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta (CGSM), which is a low energy, lagoonal system. Working with our partners, we will collect empirical data on the status of the mangrove system and the following ecosystem services: fisheries, flood and erosion regulation and sediment regulation. We will combine these data with quantitative and qualitative data on the economic and social impacts of the current El Niño event, and supplement them with time series environmental data from a series of monitoring stations maintained by INVEMAR, the Colombian Marine and Coastal Research Institute.We will derive economic values associated with key ecosystem services from the mangroves using a combination of market-based and spatial value transfer approaches. We will work with local community groups and stakeholders (via workshops) to develop and refine our models of ecological and physical properties of the mangroves into integrated ecological-economic models, and use a future scenarios-based approach to examine the ecosystem and livelihood impacts of various anthropogenic pressures and internal changes within the mangroves. The work will enhance the environmental and socio-economic evidence base of the impacts of the current El Niño event in Colombia and, through the development of co-produced models, contribute to a better understanding of resilience of these systems and the livelihoods they support, to future El Niño events in the region.