Mapping the Human Effect on Oceans
Over 40% of the world's oceans are heavily impacted by human activities such as fishing, pollution, in addition to climate change, according to scientists working with the National Science Foundation's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
The goal of the research is to estimate and visualize, for the first time, the global impact humans are having on the oceans's ecosystems.
"This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans." said lead scientist Ben Halpern of NCEAS. "Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up, the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me."
The study reports that the most heavily affected waters in the world include large areas of the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean Sea, the east coast of North America, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bering Sea and several regions in the western Pacific. The least affected areas are largely near the pole, according to the National Science Foundation
"Unfortunately, as polar ice sheets disappear with warming global climate and human activities spread into these areas, there is a great risk of rapid degradation of these relatively pristine ecosystems," said Carrie Kappel, a scientist at NCEAS.
You can check out the results of the study and the different maps used in the research
right here.
