Knowns and unknowns in future human pressures on the ocean

Growing demands on ocean resources are placing increasing pressure on ocean ecosystems. To assess the current state of knowledge of future human pressures on the ocean, we conducted a literature review of recent and projected trends of 25 anthropogenic pressures, comprising most of the identified human pressures on the global oceans. To better understand gaps in the data, we developed a comprehensive framework of the activities contributing to each pressure. All pressures were allocated to five categories (biological disruption, disturbance, and removal, altered ocean chemistry, pollution, and climate pressures). All pressures are expected to worsen in the future under business-as-usual scenarios (or similar) based on past trajectories and/or models of future scenarios. Eight of the pressures assessed have not been projected into the future (diseases and pathogens, introduced coastal wildlife predation, disruption to sediment dynamics, wildlife strikes, organic and inorganic chemical po..., A list of anthropogenic pressures (n=25) and corresponding activities was pre-determined and defined, building on similar efforts to catalog pressures (Halpern et al., 2007; O’Hara and Halpern 2022). The summarized list is presented in Figure 1 and the full description of each pressure is in the Supporting Information. This was followed by a scoping review (Collins et al., 2015) to identify available publications on projected ocean pressures at a global scale that had either quantitative or qualitative trend outputs.
The literature search was completed between February and May 2022, using the SCOPUS database. Academic journal articles, books, reports, and grey literature published between 2000-2022, in English, were included. Word search criteria (of titles) included: (global* OR world OR ocean OR coast*) AND (forecast* OR project* OR trend OR predict* OR estimate* OR ensemble OR review); with additional keywords according to each pressure (e.g., “sea level rise”). The results of the da..., , # Knowns and unknowns in future human pressures on the ocean

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p8cz8w9zw](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p8cz8w9zw)

## Authors

O. Alejandra Vargas-Fonseca

Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa.

**Corresponding author:** [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])

Melanie Frazier

National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Amanda T. Lombard

Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa.

Benjamin S. Halpern

National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

## **File list**

Vargas Fonseca Knowns and Unknowns in Future Human Pressures on the Ocean data.xlsx 

## **File description**

We conducted a literature review of 86 articl...