scholarly journals Quantifying Coral Reef Resilience to Climate Change and Human Development: An Evaluation of Multiple Empirical Frameworks

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley H. Y. Bang ◽  
Chao-Yang Kuo ◽  
Colin Kuo-Chang Wen ◽  
Kah-Leng Cherh ◽  
Ming-Jay Ho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Coral Reef ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Coral Reef Resilience ◽  
Coral Communities ◽  
Coral Recovery ◽  
Key Indicators

The integrity of coral reefs has increasingly been threatened by human development and climate change. As a result, the concept of ecological resilience – an ecosystem's capability to resist and recover from environmental stressors – has become an important aspect of coral reef conservation. In this study, coral reef resilience was quantitatively scored in Kenting National Park (KNP), Taiwan, using four different assessment frameworks: the first uses the opinions of local reef experts, the second includes metrics specific to the local reef context, the third combines the previous two approaches, and the fourth relies solely on ecological metrics from biodiversity surveys. To evaluate the accuracy of each assessment, the resulting resilience scores were compared with historical coral recovery rates, which served as a proxy for resilience. While each approach to measuring resilience has its merits and drawbacks, the picture of resilience became clearest when a few key indicators were included to reflect core ecosystem processes. Trends in resilience scores varied depending on the makeup of the assessment's indicators, and there was little correlation between the baseline metrics measured using different data collection methods. However, all resilience assessment trends indicated that KNP's Nanwan area is high in resilience. This is likely due to the effects of local tidally-induced upwelling, which significantly relieve the growing thermal stress placed on surrounding coral communities. Ultimately, the most successful assessments were those that empirically quantified ecological processes and local factors with only a few indicators, rather than broader approaches that measured many indicators. These findings are particularly relevant for reef managers to consider as they develop and employ resilience-based management strategies.

scholarly journals Corrigendum: Quantifying Coral Reef Resilience to Climate Change and Human Development: An Evaluation of Multiple Empirical Frameworks

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley H. Y. Bang ◽  
Chao-Yang Kuo ◽  
Colin Kuo-Chang Wen ◽  
Kah-Leng Cherh ◽  
Ming-Jay Ho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Coral Reef ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Coral Reef Resilience

scholarly journals Coral Reef Resilience through Biodiversity

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline S. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Coral Reef ◽  
Coral Reefs ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Marine Protected Area ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Coral Reef Resilience ◽  
Global Action ◽  
Coral Reef Degradation

Irrefutable evidence of coral reef degradation worldwide and increasing pressure from rising seawater temperatures and ocean acidification associated with climate change have led to a focus on reef resilience and a call to “manage” coral reefs for resilience. Ideally, global action to reduce emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be accompanied by local action. Effective management requires reduction of local stressors, identification of the characteristics of resilient reefs, and design of marine protected area networks that include potentially resilient reefs. Future research is needed on how stressors interact, on how climate change will affect corals, fish, and other reef organisms as well as overall biodiversity, and on basic ecological processes such as connectivity. Not all reef species and reefs will respond similarly to local and global stressors. Because reef-building corals and other organisms have some potential to adapt to environmental changes, coral reefs will likely persist in spite of the unprecedented combination of stressors currently affecting them. The biodiversity of coral reefs is the basis for their remarkable beauty and for the benefits they provide to society. The extraordinary complexity of these ecosystems makes it both more difficult to predict their future and more likely they will have a future.

Interactionist Tools for Assessing Community Resilience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Braden Leap
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Symbolic Interaction ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Resilience Theory ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
Policies And Programs

This chapter contends that classic and contemporary research by symbolic interactionists, and those in closely related theoretical traditions, can provide an effective toolkit for enriching assessments of how resilience unfolds in practice. This is especially important if we hope to develop and implement policies and programs that have a greater potential for enhancing communities' abilities to effectively respond to socio-ecological disruptions. The chapter discusses resilience theory before addressing how interactionist work on institutions as well as interactions between humans and nonhumans—what can be referred to as (non)human interactions—can enrich considerations of resilience. Socio-ecological resilience theory has increasingly been utilized by scholars, development officials, and policy makers to assess whether and how communities can be sustained in response to disruptions related to a range of socio-ecological processes such as floods, epidemics, climate change, and economic downturns. Paralleling others who advocate employing multiple theoretical traditions to better assess the intricate complexities of resilience, instead of arguing that symbolic interaction should supplant other approaches to studying resilience, the chapter emphasizes that symbolic interactionism can complement and extend existing research on resilience.

scholarly journals Coral reef diversity losses in China’s Greater Bay Area were driven by regional stressors

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (40) ◽  
pp. eabb1046
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Cybulski ◽  
Stefan M. Husa ◽  
Nicolas N. Duprey ◽  
Briony L. Mamo ◽  
Toby P. N. Tsang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Coral Reef ◽  
Inorganic Nitrogen ◽  
Species Dominance ◽  
Critical Gap ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Poor Water Quality ◽  
Coral Communities ◽  
And Function

Observations of coral reef losses to climate change far exceed our understanding of historical degradation before anthropogenic warming. This is a critical gap to fill as conservation efforts simultaneously work to reverse climate change while restoring coral reef diversity and function. Here, we focused on southern China’s Greater Bay Area, where coral communities persist despite centuries of coral mining, fishing, dredging, development, and pollution. We compared subfossil assemblages with modern-day communities and revealed a 40% decrease in generic diversity, concomitant to a shift from competitive to stress-tolerant species dominance since the mid-Holocene. Regions with characteristically poor water quality—high chl-a, dissolved inorganic nitrogen, and turbidity—had lower contemporary diversity and the greatest community composition shift observed in the past, driven by the near extirpation of Acropora. These observations highlight the urgent need to mitigate local stressors from development in concert with curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

scholarly journals Questions of importance to the conservation of global biological diversity: answers from the past

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1139-1162 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. Willis ◽  
S. A. Bhagwat
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
Past Climate Change ◽  
Integrated Conservation

Abstract. Paleoecological records are replete with examples of biotic responses to past climate change and human impact but how can we use these records in the conservation of current and future biodiversity? A recently published list of One Hundred Questions of Importance to the Conservation of Global Biological Diversity (Sutherland et al., 2009) highlights a number of key research questions that need a temporal perspective. Many of these questions are related to the determination of ecological processes in order to assess ecosystem function and services, climate change-integrated conservation strategies, and ecosystem management and restoration. However, it is noticeable that not a single contributor to this list was from the paleo-research community and that extremely few paleo-records are ever used in the development of terrestrial conservation management plans. This lack of dialogue between conservationists and the paleo-community is partially driven by a perception that the data provided by paleoecological records are purely descriptive and not of relevance to the day-to-day management and conservation of biological diversity. This paper illustrates, through a series of case-studies, how long-term ecological records (>50 years) can provide a test of predictions and assumptions of ecological processes that are directly relevant to management strategies necessary in order to retain biological diversity in a changing climate. This includes information on diversity baselines, thresholds, resilience, and restoration of ecological processes.

scholarly journals Differential recovery from mass coral bleaching on naturally extreme reef environments in NW Australia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verena Schoepf ◽  
E. Maria U. Jung ◽  
Malcolm McCulloch ◽  
Nicole E White ◽  
Michael Stat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Coral Reefs ◽  
Temperature Variability ◽  
Live Coral ◽  
Recovery Capacity ◽  
Reef Environments ◽  
Coral Communities ◽  
Coral Recovery ◽  
Nw Australia ◽  
Mass Bleaching

Coral reefs are severely threatened by climate change and recurrent mass bleaching events, highlighting the need for a better understanding of the factors driving recovery and resilience both at the community and species level. While temperature variability has been shown to promote coral heat tolerance, it remains poorly understood how this influences coral recovery capacity. Similarly, few studies have investigated how the presence of cryptic species influences bleaching and recovery responses. Using an integrated ecological, physiological and genomic approach, we examined the recovery of both coral communities and their dominant species from the 2016 mass bleaching event in the macrotidal Kimberley region, NW Australia. We show that recovery of coral communities inhabiting adjacent but environmentally contrasting reef habitats differed dramatically following unprecedented bleaching in 2016. Both intertidal (thermally extreme) and subtidal (thermally moderate) habitats experienced extensive bleaching (72-81%), but subtidal coral communities had a greater percentage of severely bleached corals than the intertidal community (76% versus 53%). Similarly, subtidal Acropora aspera corals suffered much greater losses of chlorophyll a than intertidal conspecifics (96% versus 46%). The intertidal coral community fully recovered to its pre-bleaching configuration within six months, whereas the adjacent subtidal suffered extensive mortality (68% loss of live coral cover). Despite the presence of three cryptic genetic lineages in the dominant coral species, the physiological response of A. aspera was independent of host cryptic genetic diversity. Furthermore, both intertidal and subtidal A. aspera harbored symbionts in the genus Cladocopium (previously clade C). Our findings highlight the important role of tidally-controlled temperature variability in promoting coral recovery capacity, and we propose that shallow reef environments characterized by strong environmental gradients may generally promote coral resilience to extreme climatic events. Thermally variable reef environments may therefore provide important spatial refugia for coral reefs under rapid climate change.

scholarly journals If the trees burn, is the forest lost? Past dynamics in temperate forests help inform management strategies

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1794) ◽  
pp. 20190115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Iglesias ◽  
Cathy Whitlock
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Temperate Forests ◽  
Dynamic Equilibrium ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Ecological Resilience ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Positive Feedbacks

Forest dynamics are driven by top-down changes in climate and bottom-up positive (destabilizing) and negative (stabilizing) biophysical feedbacks involving disturbance and biotic interactions. When positive feedbacks prevail, the resulting self-propagating changes can potentially shift the system into a new state, even in the absence of climate change. Conversely, negative feedbacks help maintain a dynamic equilibrium that allows communities to recover their pre-disturbance characteristics. We examine palaeoenvironmental records from temperate forests to assess the nature of long-term stability and regime shifts under a broader range of environmental forcings than can be observed at present. Forest histories from northwestern USA, Patagonia, Tasmania and New Zealand show long-term trajectories that were governed by (i) the biophysical template, (ii) characteristics of climate and disturbance, (iii) historical legacies that condition the ecological capacity to respond to subsequent disturbances, and (iv) thresholds that act as irreversible barriers. Attention only to current forest conditions overlooks the significance of history in creating path dependency, the importance of individual extreme events, and the inherent feedbacks that force an ecosystem into reorganization. A long-time perspective on ecological resilience helps guide conservation strategies that focus on environmental preservation as well as identify vulnerable species and ecosystems to future climate change. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions’.

scholarly journals Evolution and connectivity influence the persistence and recovery of coral reefs under climate change in the Caribbean, Southwest Pacific, and Coral Triangle

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa C. McManus ◽  
Daniel L. Forrest ◽  
Edward W. Tekwa ◽  
Daniel E. Schindler ◽  
Madhavi A. Colton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Coral Reef ◽  
Coral Cover ◽  
Larval Settlement ◽  
Network Size ◽  
Coral Triangle ◽  
Southwest Pacific ◽  
Network Characteristics ◽  
Coral Communities ◽  
The Caribbean

AbstractCorals are experiencing unprecedented decline from climate change-induced mass bleaching events. Dispersal not only contributes to coral reef persistence through demographic rescue but can also hinder or facilitate evolutionary adaptation. Locations of reefs that are likely to survive future warming therefore remain largely unknown, particularly within the context of both ecological and evolutionary processes across complex seascapes that differ in temperature range, strength of connectivity, network size, and other characteristics. Here, we used eco-evolutionary simulations to examine coral adaptation to warming across reef networks in the Caribbean, the Southwest Pacific, and the Coral Triangle. We assessed the factors associated with coral persistence in multiple reef systems to understand which results are general and which are sensitive to particular geographic contexts. We found that evolution can be critical in preventing extinction and facilitating the long-term recovery of coral communities in all regions. Furthermore, the strength of immigration to a reef (destination strength) and current sea surface temperature robustly predicted reef persistence across all reef networks and across temperature projections. However, we found higher initial coral cover, slower recovery, and more evolutionary lag in the Coral Triangle, which has a greater number of reefs and more larval settlement than the other regions. We also found the lowest projected future coral cover in the Caribbean. These findings suggest that coral reef persistence depends on ecology, evolution, and habitat network characteristics, and that, under an emissions stabilization scenario (RCP 4.5), recovery may be possible over multiple centuries.

scholarly journals Rapid increase in coral cover on an isolated coral reef, the Ashmore Reef National Nature Reserve, north-western Australia

2011 ◽  
Vol 62 (10) ◽  
pp. 1214 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Ceccarelli ◽  
Z. T. Richards ◽  
M. S. Pratchett ◽  
C. Cvitanovic
Keyword(s):  
Coral Reef ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
Coral Cover ◽  
Taxonomic Composition ◽  
Coastal Pollution ◽  
Percent Cover ◽  
Community Recovery ◽  
Coral Communities ◽  
Coral Recovery ◽  
North Western

Against a background of coral reef ecosystem decline, understanding the propensity for coral communities to recover after acute disturbances is fundamental to forecasting and maintaining resilience. It may be expected that offshore reef ecosystems are less affected by anthropogenic disturbances compared with reefs closer to population centres, but that recovery may be slower on isolated reefs following disturbances. To test the hypothesis that community recovery is slow in isolated locations, we measured changes in coral cover and relative abundance of coral genera over a 4 year period (2005–09) at Ashmore Reef, north Western Australia, following severe bleaching. The percent cover of hard coral tripled, from 10.2% (±1.46 s.e.) in 2005 to 29.4% (±1.83 s.e.) in 2009 in all habitats (exposed and lagoonal) and depth zones (2–5 and 8–10 m), and the percent cover of soft corals doubled, from 4.5% (+0.63 s.e.) in 2005 to 8.3% (+1.4 s.e.) in 2009. Significant shifts in the taxonomic composition of hard corals were detected. Our results imply that coral recovery in isolated locations can occur rapidly after an initial delay in recruitment, presumably through the interacting effects of self-recruitment and reduced exposure to additive impacts such as coastal pollution.

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