Assessing the conservation values and tourism threats in Barrientos Island, Antarctic Peninsula.

Antarctica has been witnessing continued growth of tourism, both in the overall visitation and in the diversity of itineraries and visitor activities. Expanding tourism presents unique business and educational opportunities, but it is also putting immense pressure on Antarctica's natural, and for the most parts, pristine environment. Understanding the effectiveness of different tourism management strategies and instruments, like the Visitor Site Guidelines adopted by the Antarctic Treaty, is fundamental to the sustainable management of Antarctic tourism. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of Visitor Site Guidelines and other tourism management actions in reducing impacts to the natural environment and for this, we used Barrientos Island as our case study as this is one of the most popular sites for tourism activities in the Antarctic Peninsula Region. First, we conducted a literature review and biological inventories to enable a thorough description of Barrientos Island's ecological values. The results show that Barrientos Island occupies the third highest biological richness among the top 15 most visited sites in the Antarctic Peninsula Region. We then assessed how tourism use on Barrientos Island affected biodiversity and the environment, and how Visitor Site Guidelines and other management measures helped alleviate these impacts. As intended, these instruments has been positive and valuable by providing operational guidance. However, they may lack significant information for tourism decision-making processes. To this end, we propose an alternative adaptive management approach that can more efficiently conserve biodiversity and environmental values while allowing the development of sustainable tourism activities in Antarctica.

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project.

The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)-has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.

Assessing environmental conditions of Antarctic footpaths to support management decisions.

Thousands of tourists visit certain Antarctic sites each year, generating a wide variety of environmental impacts. Scientific knowledge of human activities and their impacts can help in the effective design of management measures and impact mitigation. We present a case study from Barrientos Island in which a management measure was originally put in place with the goal of minimizing environmental impacts but resulted in new undesired impacts. Two alternative footpaths used by tourist groups were compared. Both affected extensive moss carpets that cover the middle part of the island and that are very vulnerable to trampling. The first path has been used by tourists and scientists since over a decade and is a marked route that is clearly visible. The second one was created more recently. Several physical and biological indicators were measured in order to assess the environmental conditions for both paths. Some physical variables related to human impact were lower for the first path (e.g. soil penetration resistance and secondary treads), while other biochemical and microbiological variables were higher for the second path (e.g. ß-glucosidase and phosphatase activities, soil respiration). Moss communities located along the new path were also more diverse and sensitive to trampling. Soil biota (Collembola) was also more abundant and richer. These data indicate that the decision to adopt the second path did not lead to the reduction of environmental impacts as this path runs over a more vulnerable area with more outstanding biological features (e.g. microbiota activity, flora and soil fauna diversity). In addition, the adoption of a new route effectively doubles the human footprint on the island. We propose using only the original path that is less vulnerable to the impacts of trampling. Finally from this process, we identify several key issues that may be taken into account when carrying out impact assessment and environmental management decision-making in the Antarctic area.