The Earth’s biodiversity is threatened by increasing human impacts, such as climate change, pollution and overexploitation. These impacts are jeopardizing the capacity of ecosystems to provide the goods and services that are vital to sustain human life.

 

In response to this challenge, in 2009 the concept of planetary boundaries was introduced as a new approach to the sustainable management of Earth’s resources. Planetary boundaries, often described as “tipping points”, define a possible safe operating space for humanity. The biodiversity boundary represents the amount of biodiversity the planet can lose without the destabilization of vital environmental resources.

 

To date, research on the biodiversity planetary boundary has focussed on the terrestrial environment. Given both the importance of the marine realm for human life, and the intensifying threats to the world’s oceans, characterization of the biodiversity planetary boundary in the marine environment is vital.

 

The objective of the proposed masters research is to quantify the biodiversity planetary boundary for the world’s ocean and examine scenarios of projected human impacts to produce risk maps for areas of the ocean that will approach or exceed the biodiversity planetary boundary this century.