The Arctic Ocean is experiencing an environmental state-change with expanding human activities ranging from commercial shipping and energy development to ship-based tourism. Accordingly, with involvement of indigenous peoples, Arctic and non-Arctic states have begun to develop national and international management regimes to address emerging issues, impacts and resources in the Arctic Ocean. In every case, there will be challenges to implement agreements in the face of political and financial constraints. "Pan-Arctic Options - Holistic Integration for Arctic Coastal- Marine Sustainability" is designed in an international, interdisciplinary and inclusive manner, involving cost-effective collaboration with currentlyfunded projects to contribute to informed decision-making by policy makers from government and industry. The core team includes natural and social scientists from Canada, China, France, Norway, Russia and the United States who will integrate document collections, geospatial data and stakeholder perspectives. This integrated decision-support tool will involve users in the co-design and co-production of options for both policy and built elements that are needed together for sustainable infrastructure development in the Arctic Ocean. A unique observational contribution from Pan- Arctic Options will be the analysis of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data of ship traffic across the Arctic Ocean collected from polar-orbiting satellites from 2009 forward. Results will be disseminated via journals (e.g., Science, Nature) and books as well as less-conventional methods involving facilitated dialogues in annual venues (e.g., Arctic Frontiers, Arctic Circle) and in the 2016 Arctic Expedition Summit involving the National Geographic Society and Google Ocean program. Management of this holistic project will be in the hands of a Steering Committee and an international Advisory Board involving global thought leaders and organizations (e.g., Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme), contributing to Arctic Ocean sustainability on a pan-Arctic scale.

Tropical freshwater systems support fisheries that provide food security and incomes for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. These fisheries are more likely to be heavily exploited across all species, size classes and trophic levels, in contrast to temperate target fisheries where capital cost, barriers to entry, and travel distance focus exploitation on high value species. Almost nothing is known about how tropical indiscriminate fisheries respond to change. They may be fragile due to chaotic interactions between complex biology and complex human use, or their foodwebs may be simplified by heavy exploitation in ways that make them robust and resilient in the face of change. Climate change therefore puts these systems at risk in ways that have huge repercussions for poverty alleviation but are very poorly understood. Here, we propose to (i) construct a general theory for understanding the social and ecological implications of truly indiscriminate fisheries under climate change, and; (ii) develop and test a specific application of this theory for the important case of the Tonle Sap fishery, Cambodia. Our focus on the Tonle Sap—perhaps the largest indiscriminate tropical freshwater fishery—allows us to inform responses to climate change in a fishery of major importance and one in which climate change interacts with other flow modifications (such as upstream development). We bring social science, fisheries, economics and management expertise to bear on this problem from research labs in eight universities and NGOs across three continents. The results of the research will be integrated into management through partners in three ministries, multiple communities and NGOs. Social impact in Cambodia will result by informing implementation of recent major management changes that have converted privately held fishing lots into community fisheries. Our team includes NGOs, local universities and early-career researchers to help effect this change. Internationally, our results will inform similar systems that feed and provide income for millions of people by revealing management tools effective in heavily exploited, dynamic freshwater fisheries as climate changes.

On coastal reefs (0-50 m depth), perhaps more than anywhere in the world, natural and human systems share a history of strong dependence that must be taken into account to maintain, on one side, the long-term human development and well-being, and, on the other side, biodiversity. This biodiversity translates directly into services. Reef fishes support the nutritional and economic needs of people in many poor countries while hosting the major part of marine life on Earth (25%). However world's reefs are severely over-fished or have degraded habitats. Avoiding or escaping this negative spiral and identifying the most vulnerable reef social-ecological systems on Earth are among the major issues that scientists and managers are facing today. The project aims to move beyond the typical over-simplified ‘human impacts’ storyline and focus on uncovering new solutions based on a prospective and integrated modelling approach of reef social-ecological systems at the global scale with three objectives: 1.Quantifying five key services provided by reef fishes: (i) biomass production providing livelihoods, (ii) nutrient cycling that affects productivity, (iii) regulation of the carbon cycle that affects CO2 concentration, (iv) cultural value that sustains well-being tourism activities and (v) nutritional value insuring food security. 2.Determine the conditions (socioeconomic and environmental) under which these ecosystem services are currently maintained or threatened. Based on a global database of fish surveys over more than 5,000 reefs that encompass wide gradients of environments, human influences (fishing impact), and habitats, we will estimate the boundaries or thresholds beyond which these ecosystem services may collapse. 3.Predict the potential futures of these services and social-ecological systems under various global change scenarios. Using multiple integrated scenarios (human demography, economic development and climate change) and predictive models we will simulate the dynamics of shallow reef ecosystems and their ability to deliver services during the next century.

Threats to the integrity of biodiverse Amazon floodplain habitats from deforestation, dams, and climate change are increasingly severe but to date, Amazon biodiversity scenarios have not considered these critical environments. Building on decades of floodplain-focused research in the Amazon by consortium members, we will improve characterization of Amazonian whitewater floodplain habitats and inundation dynamics, allowing us to 1) scale up existing fish, floodplain forest, and phytoplankton biodiversity datasets, 2) evaluate the potential impacts of regional drivers such as climate, land use change, and dams on floodplain habitats, and 3) engage at local and regional scale a large panel of stakeholders in looking for sustainable strategies for wetlands preservation. The scenarios produced at both scales will be compared in terms of wetlands conservation and biodiversity descriptors including Essential Biodiversity Variables and Sustainable Development Goals indicators. Our study framework focusing on the floodplains of the mainstem Amazon river (Brazil and Colombia) and Juruá river (Brazil) allows comparison between whitewater floodplain sites contrasting greatly in terms of floodplain geomorphology, land use and management history, commercial fishing pressure, and human population density. Innovative aspects of our work include 1) testing a remote-sensing-based approach for mapping phytoplankton biodiversity in floodplain lakes; 2) use of new satellite data to greatly increase the spatiotemporal resolution of floodplain habitat and inundation maps; 3) use of environmental eDNA metabarcoding to examine the distribution and relative abundance of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish in floodplain lakes; 4) individual-based modeling of Lévy-flight fish foraging patterns across a network of oxbow lakes; and 5) nested-scale agent-based participatory models to develop scenarios. The proposed work will greatly expand available information for decision-making to support the vast biodiversity and extensive ecosystem services provided by Amazon whitewater floodplains.