Effects of Global Warming on Marine Ecosystems

Marine ecosystems are very diversified and involved in a complicated net of internal and external intercommunications. Their evolutionary history and present adaptive possibilities strongly depend on variability of climate conditions. Ocean basins in equatorial, tropical, and moderate zones are distinguished by the stability of environmental parameters and less affected by climatic anomalies. On the contrary, polar oceans were the arena of significant ecosystem changes in the geological past, and their response to natural and anthropogenic impacts is essential in many respects. Global warming as a whole is favorable for primary production and therefore for increase in biological productivity on all ecosystem levels. However, other anthropogenic impacts, such as overfishing and marine pollution, act in the opposite direction, so future changes of marine ecosystems will depend mainly on human activity aimed at environmental protection and resource management: aquaculture, introduction of new species, legislative regulation of fishery, and prevention of marine pollution.