Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Conservation and Sustainability
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1493592
This article is part of the Research Topic Understanding the Response of Ecosystems to Increasing Human Pressures and Climate Change – Management Options View all 22 articles

Risk assessment to Barents Sea ecosystem services: An expert-based approach

Provisionally accepted
Thuy Thi Thanh Pham Thuy Thi Thanh Pham 1*Claire W Armstrong Claire W Armstrong 1Hiroko Kato Solvang Hiroko Kato Solvang 2Mette Skern-Mauritzen Mette Skern-Mauritzen 2
  • 1 UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
  • 2 Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Bergen, Hordaland, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study aims to investigate risks of climate change and anthropogenic activities on ecosystem services in the Barents Sea, Norway. By using an expert assessment approach, we identify which ecosystem services are at high risk and from which human activities and pressures. The findings show that the risks vary across ecosystem services, activities and pressures; however, most are categorized as medium or low. Biodiversity as a cultural service, and Fish/shellfish as a provisioning service, are identified as the two most threatened ecosystem services. In contrast, Educational services are perceived to be the least impacted.Temperature change is found to have the greatest impact on the services. The experts are generally uncertain about the risk levels, yet the risk to Fish/shellfish and Biodiversity are the two services associated with the least uncertainties. The results highlight the limited knowledge regarding risks to ecosystem services in the Barents Sea. The study emphasizes the need for future research to address the identified knowledge gaps and discusses where management efforts should be directed.

    Keywords: Barents Sea, certainty, ecosystem services, expert, risk assessment 1. Introduction

    Received: 09 Sep 2024; Accepted: 02 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Pham, Armstrong, Solvang and Skern-Mauritzen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Thuy Thi Thanh Pham, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.