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- Harkonen, T., et al.
(författare)
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Collapse of a Marine Mammal Species Driven by Human Impacts
- 2012
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Ingår i: Plos One. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 7:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding historical roles of species in ecosystems can be crucial for assessing long term human impacts on environments, providing context for management or restoration objectives, and making conservation evaluations of species status. In most cases limited historical abundance data impedes quantitative investigations, but harvested species may have long-term data accessible from hunting records. Here we make use of annual hunting records for Caspian seals (Pusa caspica) dating back to the mid-19th century, and current census data from aerial surveys, to reconstruct historical abundance using a hind-casting model. We estimate the minimum numbers of seals in 1867 to have been 1-1.6 million, but the population declined by at least 90% to around 100,000 individuals by 2005, primarily due to unsustainable hunting throughout the 20th century. This collapse is part of a broader picture of catastrophic ecological change in the Caspian over the 20th Century. Our results combined with fisheries data show that the current biomass of top predators in the Caspian is much reduced compared to historical conditions. The potential for the Caspian and other similar perturbed ecosystems to sustain natural resources of much greater biological and economic value than at present depends on the extent to which a number of anthropogenic impacts can be harnessed.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Sundqvist, Lisa, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Linking Climate Trends to Population Dynamics in the Baltic Ringed Seal: Impacts of Historical and Future Winter Temperatures
- 2012
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 41:8, s. 865-872
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A global trend of a warming climate may seriously affect species dependent on sea ice. We investigated the impact of climate on the Baltic ringed seals (Phoca hispida botnica), using historical and future climatological time series. Availability of suitable breeding ice is known to affect pup survival. We used detailed information on how winter temperatures affect the extent of breeding ice and a climatological model (RCA3) to project the expected effects on the Baltic ringed seal population. The population comprises of three sub-populations, and our simulations suggest that all of them will experience severely hampered growth rates during the coming 90 years. The projected 30 730 seals at the end of the twenty-first century constitutes only 16 % of the historical population size, and thus reduced ice cover alone will severely limit their growth rate. This adds burden to a species already haunted by other anthropogenic impacts.
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