A More Comprehensive Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Fisheries Social-Ecological Systems

Understanding and anticipating the effects of climate change on fisheries social-ecological systems (FSESs) is central to proactive management in a changing global climate. With increasingly striving consider interactions feedbacks among people, targeted species, broader ecological human communities, managers participants need tools help them assess these complex systems. We developed new vulnerability assessment framework for analyzing impacts climate-induced trend or event FSES. The divides FSES into four interrelated interacting domains: Ecological Community, Fished Species, Fishery, Human Community. provides systematic approach account indirect as well direct effects, links subsystems, multiple change-induced stressors. demonstrate framework’s utility by applying it three case studies: marine heatwave Dungeness crab FSES, red sea urchin long-term trends North Pacific albacore. found that climatic are often can trigger diverse important feedbacks. These examples also showed may cause changes temporal spatial distribution fishing effort fished species have more significant impact than abundance per se . Unlike other frameworks applications, ours designed enable consideration range within both communities. As such, valuable tool guide holistic examination potential FSESs.