OA Week 2021, LAOCA (Latin America & Caribbean) Hub Session
Dr. Paulo Horta, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
Description: Brazil’s Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) extends from 5o N to 33o S along more than 8,000 km and corresponds to 3.5 million km². This huge marine area is also called the “Blue Amazon”; it is rich in biodiversity, fisheries resources, growing aquaculture, and key ecosystems such as mangroves, coral reefs, seamounts, seagrass meadows, rhodolith beds provide services such as shore protection, carbonate deposits and atmospheric CO2 sink. The Brazilian Ocean Acidification Network (BrOA; www.broa.furg.br) comprises 41 associated researchers from 9 Brazilian institutions, distributed along almost all country regions. The network has been working on local monitoring in LTER programs, regional ocean observational initiatives, experimental and modelling efforts to investigate trends and impacts of OA in the western South Atlantic Ocean (WSAO). Besides important advances with some isolated monitoring programs and experimental facilities, Brazil still experiences knowledge gaps, infrastructure deficiencies, and other OA-related issues in the WSAO. This presentation outlines the main BrOA network results and advances in the last 10 years, as well as our challenges facing marine ecosystem management in Brazil’s EEZ through the UN Ocean Decade and under a climate change scenario and a hostile government environmental agenda.
Ocean Acidification Week 2021 was sponsored by the following organizations:
(1) GOA-ON, the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network,
(2) NOAA, the United States National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration,
(3) IAEA OA-ICC, the International Atomic Energy Agency – Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre, and
(4) IOC-UNESCO – the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
For more information, please visit www.goa-on.org
GOA-ON, YouTube, 22 September 2021. Text and video.
