Venezuela. Rapid assessment of coral reefs in the Archipelago de Los Roques National Park, Venezuela (part 2: fishes)

This article will analyze the spatial pattern as well as the degradation pattern of the coral reefs in the Bunaken National Park. Bunaken National Park is a marine national park located in the Province of North Sulawesi; the park was built as means of conservation as well as providing a region for tourism. The national park contains a different type of marine and land ecosystem, one of the many types of the ecosystem that are in the national park is coral reefs. Coral reefs in Bunaken National Park provides different kinds of function and benefits whether for the marine habitats that live around the ecosystem, as well as for the local people who live in the islands of the national park. Remote sensing could be used as a tool to identify the spatial pattern and the type of ecosystem that habits inside shallow sea water. The main issue with this method is that the research cannot be conduct directly to identify which type of ecosystem specifically (such as coral reefs, seagrass, etc.), as well as its condition. Therefore, data collecting is necessary to observe and identify the ecosystem and its condition specifically. This study uses satellite image from Landsat 8 OLI as the main secondary data to be processed. The satellite image will be processed by using an algorithm of shallow water analysis that was introduced by Lyzenga in 1981. Since data verification and data observation is needed for this study, the research observes the pattern of the different type of ecosystem and its condition that spreads around Bunaken National Park. The verification and observation process was done by GPS, there were 250 different samples from the data that were collected around the Bunaken National Park. The sample that was collected in the study area will be used to classify the satellite image that has been processed by shallow water algorithm, on which could identify: seagrass, bleached coral reefs, deceased coral reefs, and healthy coral reefs around the national park. The results of this study show the spatial pattern of the coral reefs is located usually around the islands in the Bunaken National Park. The results show that the coral reefs are mostly located around the islands in the National Park. The map results show that the healthy coral reefs are usually located in the outermost layer around the shallow water ecosystem. The bleached reefs are usually located in the middle section of the shallow water, between the healthy coral and the islands itself. Most of the reefs that died and bleached are in the southwest of Bunaken Island, and the northwest of Nain Island.

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Coral Reef Resilience in Taiwan: Lessons from Long-Term Ecological Research on the Coral Reefs of Kenting National Park (Taiwan)

Journal of Marine Science and Engineering ◽

10.3390/jmse7110388 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (11) ◽

pp. 388 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Shashank Keshavmurthy ◽

Chao-Yang Kuo ◽

Ya-Yi Huang ◽

Rodrigo Carballo-Bolaños ◽

Pei-Jei Meng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Coral Reefs ◽

National Park ◽

Seawater Temperature ◽

Ecological Research ◽

Thermal Environments ◽

Coral Reef Resilience ◽

Long Term Ecological Research ◽

Kenting National Park ◽

Over Time

Coral reefs in the Anthropocene are being subjected to unprecedented levels of stressors, including local disturbances—such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution—and large-scale destruction related to the global impacts of climate change—such as typhoons and coral bleaching. Thus, the future of corals and coral reefs in any given community and coral-Symbiodiniaceae associations over time will depend on their level of resilience, from individual corals to entire ecosystems. Herein we review the environmental settings and long-term ecological research on coral reefs, based on both coral resilience and space, in Kenting National Park (KNP), Hengchun Peninsula, southern Taiwan, wherein fringing reefs have developed along the coast of both capes and a semi-closed bay, known as Nanwan, within the peninsula. These reefs are influenced by a branch of Kuroshio Current, the monsoon-induced South China Sea Surface Current, and a tide-induced upwelling that not only shapes coral communities, but also reduces the seawater temperature and creates fluctuating thermal environments which over time have favoured thermal-resistant corals, particularly those corals close to the thermal effluent of a nuclear power plant in the west Nanwan. Although living coral cover (LCC) has fluctuated through time in concordance with major typhoons and coral bleaching between 1986 and 2019, spatial heterogeneity in LCC recovery has been detected, suggesting that coral reef resilience is variable among subregions in KNP. In addition, corals exposed to progressively warmer and fluctuating thermal environments show not only a dominance of associated, thermally-tolerant Durusdinium spp. but also the ability to shuffle their symbiont communities in response to seasonal variations in seawater temperature without bleaching. We demonstrate that coral reefs in a small geographical range with unique environmental settings and ecological characteristics, such as the KNP reef, may be resilient to bleaching and deserve novel conservation efforts. Thus, this review calls for conservation efforts that use resilience-based management programs to reduce local stresses and meet the challenge of climate change.

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Economic Value of Cultural Ecosystem Services from Recreation in Popa Mountain National Park, Myanmar: A Comparison of Two Rapid Valuation Techniques

Land ◽

10.3390/land8120194 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (12) ◽

pp. 194

Author(s):

Wai Soe Zin ◽

Aya Suzuki ◽

Kelvin S.-H. Peh ◽

Alexandros Gasparatos

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Protected Areas ◽

Ecosystem Service ◽

National Park ◽

Rapid Assessment ◽

Economic Value ◽

Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽

Recreational Value ◽

The Individual ◽

Survey Protocol

Protected areas offer diverse ecosystem services, including cultural services related to recreation, which contribute manifold to human wellbeing and the economy. However, multiple pressures from other human activities often compromise ecosystem service delivery from protected areas. It is thus fundamental for effective management to understand the recreational values and visitor behaviors in such areas. This paper undertakes a rapid assessment of the economic value of cultural ecosystem services related to recreation in a national park in Myanmar using two valuation techniques, the individual travel cost method (TCM) and the Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA v.1.2). We focus on the Popa Mountain National Park, a protected area visited by approximately 800,000 domestic and 25,000 international tourists annually. Individual TCM estimates that each domestic visitor spent USD 20–24 per trip, and the total annual recreational value contributed by these visitors was estimated at USD 16.1–19.6 million (USD 916–1111 ha−1). TESSA estimated the annual recreational expenditure from domestic and international visitors at USD 15.1 million (USD 858 ha−1) and USD 5.04 million (USD 286 ha−1), respectively. Both methods may be employed as practical approaches to assess the recreational values of protected areas (and other land uses with recreational value), and they have rather complementary approaches. We recommend that both techniques be combined into a single survey protocol.

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