Vulnerability of sea turtle nesting areas to climate change

Authors

Keywords:

Climate change, sea turtles, conservation of threatened species

Abstract

Introduction:This study pretends to determine the vulnerability of sea turtle nesting areas in the western Cuban archipelago due to climate change and other threats.

The objectives of this paper are: to estimate  the sex ratio in every season from   the temperature and the incubation period for the beaches analyzed, to evaluate the influence of the vegetation in the distribution of the nests and the embryonic development, to correlate the geomorphologic changes due to tropical storms in the Guanahacabibes peninsula with the reproductive success of the sea turtles and to document the impact generated by the accumulation of sargassum in the conduct and the reproductive success of the sea turtles.

Methods: They were analyzed 21 sea turtle nesting seasons in the Guanahacabibes Peninsula.

Results: It was observed an annual variation in the number of emergencies and nests per female with a well-defined biennial cycle. It was recorded a reduction in clutch size, incubation period and hatchling size. It was also estimated a higher production of females, as a consequence of the high incubation temperatures. In addition, they were monitored the dynamics of the beaches, finding important changes in the distribution and characteristics of the coastal vegetation as a result of meteorological events. They were determined areas vulnerable to coastal flooding and the impact of massive sargassum bursts. Conclusions: the evidence collected constitutes an alert for protected area managers in order to take measures aimed at mitigating the effects on the successful reproduction of sea turtles of high temperatures, meteorological events and other natural phenomena, such as sargassum bursts in the Cuban archipelago. Likewise, these results are an experience for other nesting areas in the Greater Caribbean region where they are exposed to similar threats.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2023-04-01

How to Cite

Azanza Ricardo, J., Calderón Peña, R., Cabrera Guerra, C., Martínez González, Y., Betancourt Avila, R., & Pérez Álvarez, P. (2023). Vulnerability of sea turtle nesting areas to climate change. Anales De La Academia De Ciencias De Cuba, 13(2), e1296. Retrieved from https://revistaccuba.sld.cu/index.php/revacc/article/view/1296

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 2: April-June 2023 (Issue in Progress)

Section

Natural and Exact Sciences

License

The journal Anales de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba protects copyright, and operates with a Creative Commons License 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License 4.0). By publishing in it, authors allow themselves to copy, reproduce, distribute, publicly communicate their work and generate derivative works, as long as the original author is cited and acknowledged. They do not allow, however, the use of the original work for commercial or lucrative purposes.

The authors authorize the publication of their writings, retaining the authorship rights, and assigning and transferring to the magazine all the rights protected by the intellectual property laws that govern in Cuba, which imply editing to disseminate the work.

Authors may establish additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in the journal (for example, placing it in an institutional repository or publishing it in a book), with recognition of having been first published in this journal.

To learn more, see https://creativecommons.org