Figure 2.

Spatial congruence of climate and human impacts: a SOS for the Mediterranean Sea. Three dimensions of the safe operating space (SOS) for the Mediterranean Sea (a) (image courtesy of Javier Díaz), reflecting the intensity of (b) climate change-induced ocean warming (sea surface temperature, CO₂ partial pressure and pH), (c) changes in ocean biochemistry likely caused by changes in land-use (nutrient concentrations, net primary production and dissolved oxygen concentrations), and (d) fishing impacts. All these stressors are combined in (e) to provide an overview of the spatial heterogeneity in the magnitude of environmental changes and highlight those marine areas that have undergone the largest recent changes in environmental conditions. Maintaining these systems in a desirable state of conservation and sustainable use (by retaining them within the safe operating space) as climate change progresses requires management of interacting human stressors to bring them down from excessive levels (indicated by the lower arcs in dashed, blue lines in -a-) to acceptable ones (upper arcs). Adapted from Fig. 3 in⁶.