A climate risk index for marine life across the Canadian exclusive economic zone

In Canada, DFO assessments have reported a high probability of significant climate change impacts in all marine and freshwater basins, with effects increasing over time (DFO 2012a, 2012b), while climate projections indicate that ecosystems and fisheries will be disrupted into the foreseeable future (Lotze et al. 2019b; Bryndum-Buchholz et al. 2020; Tittensor et al. 2021; Boyce et al. 2022c). Despite its imminence, climate change is infrequently factored into Canada’s primary marine conservation strategies, such as spatial planning (O’Regan et al. 2021) or fisheries management (Boyce et al. 2021a; Pepin et al. 2022). The Climate Risk Index for Biodiversity was developed to assess climate risk for marine species in a quantitative, spatially explicit, and scalable way to better support climate-informed decision-making. It has been used to evaluate climate risks for marine life globally (Boyce et al. 2022a), regionally (Lewis et al. 2023), and for fisheries (Boyce et al. 2022c). These data present results from application of the CRIB framework to estimate average climate risks associated with sea surface warming across 2,959 species throughout the Canadian marine territory under…

Publisher

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Resources

7

Catalogue metadata updated

2026-03-24