2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend – Species redistributions

Updated: 2021-03-27

The Marine chapter of the 2021 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "State and Trend of species redistributions". ***A PDF of the full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided) is downloadable in the "On-line Resources" section of this record as "EXPERT ASSESSMENT 2021 - Species Redistributions"*** ---------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES/HABITAT/COMMUNITY/PROCESS FOR EXPERT ASSESSMENT A systematic review suggests that since 2003, at least 198 Australian marine species have undergone long-term shifts in their geographic distributions. These redistributions are strongly associated with ocean warming. Indeed, 87.3% of shifts (173 species) align with expectations under warming trends i.e., these shifts are polewards in direction. Extreme climate events such as El Niño and marine heatwave events have also facilitated the contraction of warmer range limits and extension of cooler poleward range limits of species in Australia. DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT Literature search spanning all peer-reviewed scientific literature pertaining to marine species redistributions in Australia (Gervais et al., In Review) ---------------------------------------- 2021 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details] • 2021 • Assessment grade: Poor Assessment trend: Deteriorating Confidence grade: Adequate high-quality evidence or high-level of consensus Confidence trend: Adequate high-quality evidence or high-level of consensus Comparability: Not Previously Assessed ---------------------------------------- CHANGES SINCE 2016 SOE ASSESSMENT not previously assessed