Seabirds as Sentinels of Global Change
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability, Biodiversity and Conservation".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 May 2021) | Viewed by 1046
Special Issue Editors
Interests: vertebrates ecology and behavior; conservation biology; bird migration; global change
Interests: population dynamics and ecology; conservation biology; behavioral ecology; polar regions
Interests: ecophysiology; host-parasite interactions; behavioral ecology; conservation biology; extreme environments; polar regions
Interests: avian biology; ornithology; cetaceans; marine mammals; avian ecology; conservation biology; marine mammal ecology
2. Oregon Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit, Oregon State University, 104 Nash Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
Interests: population dynamics and ecology; vital rate estimation; habitat use and selection; conspecific interactions
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The rapid pace of environmental change in the Anthropocene is showing noticeable effects on the Earth’s ecosystems. Sentinel species can be used as proxies to diagnose how environments are changing, and what can be done to mitigate these changes. Seabirds are emerging as the best sentinel species in many marine environments, and their role in predicting environmental change and determining management strategies is becoming progressively more important as their sensitivity to environmental change is putting their populations at risk more than ever before. They can provide insight into ecosystem function, serving as biomonitors of ecosystem-scale changes and being quantitative indicators of ecosystem components and human activity. Thus, ecosystem changes can be monitored through their demography, diet, and foraging behavior. Indeed, seabirds have been used to monitor pollution, sizes of fish stocks, and effects of fishery management practices. Large-scale population dynamics reveal how seabird populations would be able to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, and studies have shown that seabirds can show both dramatic responses to environmental change (seabird die-offs) as well as much more subtle physiological effects. Thus, and understanding these responses gives the opportunity to predict environmental changes and determine management strategies. Additionally, data logger technology can play a key role in analyzing the responses of seabirds to global change, providing information such as foraging area and diving behavior. We urgently need more information to understand what seabirds are telling us about their interaction with their environments.
With this Special Issue, we have a chance to include the knowledge provided by seabirds to understand what environmental changes the seabirds are indicating, how they respond to human activity, as bycatch, or different management decisions. That will allow us to predict future scenarios and make the right management choices to preserve the ecosystems’ health and develop sustainable ways to harvest them.
Authors are advised to submit a preliminary abstract, in order to receive guidance on the suitability of their paper in the Special Issue. Deadline for preliminary abstract is the 1st of February 2021.
Prof. Miguel Ferrer
Dr. Virginia Morandini
Dr. Andrés Barbosa
Dr. David Ainley
Prof. Katie Dugger
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- seabirds
- global change
- human activity
- fisheries
- bycatch
- climate change
- population dynamics
- data loggers
- pollution
- emerging diseases
- pathogens
- predation
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