Scientific Literature: Searchable Database

Climate change is occurring at a rapid, widespread, and intensifying rate with natural and human systems witnessing increasingly severe, interconnected and often irreversible impacts. In the ocean, climate change is projected to strongly affect marine ecosystems mainly through increases in ocean temperature, acidification, and deoxygenation. Marine ecosystems provide essential benefits to society through several regulating, provisioning, cultural, and supporting services. These services are particularly relevant in island and coastal states, where the impacts of climate change (such as sea level rise, coastline erosion, and increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events) are expected to be most severe. Tourism is one of the main socio-economic activities on islands worldwide, namely in the bioregion of Macaronesia, where whale watching is one of the main activities. The impacts of climate change in whale watching are largely unknown, and studies that integrate the ecological and socio-economic impacts of climate change on the activity are missing. Concurrently, there is the need to provide conservation managers and practitioners with sound scientific knowledge in order to support effective and appropriate management efforts. The main goal of this dissertation is to assess the integrated biological and socio-economic vulnerability of whale watching to climate change to support the long-term sustainability of the activity in the Macaronesia bioregion. The three main research questions defined to achieve this goal are: (i) What is the ecological vulnerability of cetacean species to climate change? (ii) What is the socio-economic vulnerability of whale watching to climate change? (iii) How can the management of whale watching be supported under climate change?