Thomas Wernberg1,2, Karen Filbee-Dexter1,2 and GEAK3
1UWA Oceans Institute & School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009 WA, Australia, 2Flødevigen Research Station, Institute of Marine Research, N-4817 His, Norway, 3’Global Ecosystem services Assessment for Kelp forests’ network.
Correspondence: Thomas Wernberg, thomas.wernberg@uwa.edu.au
Kelp forests cover over a quarter of the world’s coastlines and provide extensive benefits to people. Yet, even though interest in kelp forests has increased in the past decade, our understanding of the prevalence and value of these contributions – or ecosystem services – lags decades behind other ecosystems. We lack a spatiotemporal understanding of the ecosystem services provided by kelp forests across their global range, and current economic valuations are sparse and regional, and heavily dominated by direct-use services such as fisheries and kelp harvest. This underestimates the value (sensu lato) of kelp forests considerably because they do not consider cultural values or many other ecosystem services such as carbon storage, nutrient filtration and biodiversity provision. Importantly, kelp forests continue to decline globally and efforts to restore and protect these habitats have substantially lagged behind other coastal ecosystems. This talk will present the findings of the Global Ecosystem services Assessment from Kelp forests (GEAK) network – a network that includes 32 kelp and seaweed experts and environmental economists. Over the past 2 years, the network has compiled biophysical and valuation data from 65 ecoregions. Using a common data collection protocol based on the IPBES framework, the network has quantified the prevalence of ecosystem services from kelp forests in 65 ecoregions globally and developed a total economic valuation of these services. We also quantified the trend in these services over the last two decades and identified key knowledge gaps across these ecoregions. Recognition of the value of the services provided by kelp forests will provide an impetus to restore and protect these ecosystems and help meet international targets concerning ocean accounting and ecosystem assessments.