Threats of Climate Change in Small Oceanic Islands: The Case of Climate and Agriculture in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuado
Climate change poses severe threats towards global agricultural land, ultimately hindering the achievement of food security. This is particularly acute precise for inhabited oceanic islands where various intrinsic constraints challenge self-sufficiency of
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lands are among the most vulnerable to climate change and climate variability (Allen et al., 2014), due these are land masses that evolved in isolation surrounded by large bodies of water, sustaining fragile and complex socio-environmental systems, which have been shaped by the effects of ocean currents, ocean-borne storm systems, tidal fluctuations, and other oceanic phenomenon (Shea, 2003). Thus, characteristics such as the long coastlines relative to land areas, makes islands particularly susceptible to natural hazard (Campbell, 2020). Additionally, having a restricted size limit the access to natural and social resource (Connell, Lowitt, Saint Ville, & Hickey, 2019), which, added to big distance to the continent and the lack of connection to the social and economic dynamics that this entails, makes islands systems more sensitives to changes. Specifically, Islands in the Pacific Ocean are particularly vulnerable as they sit in the heart-beat of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (Barnett, 2011) considered the largest phenomenon of inter-annual variability of the global climate system, with a recurrence period, between 2 to 8 years (dos Santos Coelho & Ambrizzi, 1999). This phenomenon expose the pacific islands to extreme changing climatic conditions such as increment/decrement of sea surface temperature and salinity, increment/decrement of sea level and wave activity, increment/decrement of air temperature and amount of ultra violet radiation reaching the surface of the earth, change in the rainfall and evaporation patterns, with direct and indirect impacts on
C. F. Mena (*) · H. A. Paltán · F. L. Benitez · C. Sampedro · M. Valverde Institute of Geography, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador Galapagos Science Center, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, Ecuador e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 S. J. Walsh et al. (eds.), Land Cover and Land Use Change on Islands, Social and Ecological Interactions in the Galapagos Islands, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43973-6_5
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the socio-environmental systems of the islands (Santos, 2006). And these phenomenon is expected to increase in frequency and intensity because of climate change effects (Barnett, 2011). Climate change impacts are not the same in every island, thus some islands may be more exposed than others and different islands will be exposed to different effects (Campbell, 2020). Some islands are affected dramatically by repeated and every time more intense natural hazards, while other islands experience more subtle climatic events, such as prolonged periods of drought and more extreme precipitation patterns, that could trigger crises in medium and long term (Barnett, 2011; Barnett et al., 2015). Although different impacts are expected from both, subtle climatic events like a dry spell, might over a period of years, set in motion a host of interrelated problems that is nearly as costly on many fronts as any individual disaster, for example a cyclone, that strikes in a matter of hours (Allen et al.,
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