It is well established that ecosystems bring meaning and well-being to individuals, often articulated through attachment to place. Degradation and threats to places and ecosystems have been shown to lead to loss of well-being. Here, we suggest that the interactions between ecosystem loss and declining well-being may involve both emotional responses associated with grief, and with observable impacts on mental health. We test these ideas on so-called ecological grief by examining individual emotional response to well-documented and publicized ecological degradation: coral bleaching and mortality in the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem. The study focuses both on one off events of coral loss and the prospect of continuing decline on the self-reported well-being of residents living within the ecosystem, visitors, and those whose livelihood is dependent on the marine resource: data from face-to-face surveys of 1870 local residents, 1804 tourists, and telephone surveys of 91 fishers and 94 tourism operators. We hypothesise that the extent to which individuals experience ecological grief is dependent on the meanings or intrinsic values (such as aesthetic, scientific, or biodiversity-based values), and is moderated by their place attachment, place identity, lifestyle dependence, place-based pride, and derived well-being. Results show that around half of residents, tourists and tourist operators surveyed, and almost one quarter of fishers, report significant Reef Grief. Reef Grief is closely and positively associated with place meanings within resident and tourist populations. By contrast respondents who rated high aesthetic value of the coral ecosystem report lower levels of Reef Grief. These findings have significant implications for how individuals and populations experience ecosystem decline and loss within places that are meaningful to them. Given inevitable cumulative future impacts on ecosystems from committed climate change impacts, understanding and managing ecological grief will become increasingly important. This study seeks to lay conceptual and theoretical foundations to identify how ecological grief is manifest and related to meaningful places and the social distribution of such grief across society.

Climate change can alter conditions that sustain food production and availability, with cascading consequences for food security and global economies. Here, we evaluate the vulnerability of societies to the simultaneous impacts of climate change on agriculture and marine fisheries at a global scale. Under a “business-as-usual” emission scenario, ~90% of the world’s population—most of whom live in the most sensitive and least developed countries—are projected to be exposed to losses of food production in both sectors, while less than 3% would live in regions experiencing simultaneous productivity gains by 2100. Under a strong mitigation scenario comparable to achieving the Paris Agreement, most countries—including the most vulnerable and many of the largest CO2 producers—would experience concomitant net gains in agriculture and fisheries production. Reducing societies’ vulnerability to future climate impacts requires prompt mitigation actions led by major CO2 emitters coupled with strategic adaptation within and across sectors.

Nutrient pollution is altering coastal ecosystems worldwide. On coral reefs, excess nutrients can favor the production of algae at the expense of reef-building corals, yet the role of nutrients in driving community changes such as shifts from coral to macroalgae is not well understood. Here we investigate the potential role of anthropogenic nutrient loading in driving recent coral-to-macroalgae phase shifts on reefs in the lagoons surrounding the Pacific island of Moorea, French Polynesia. We use nitrogen (N) tissue content and stable isotopes (d 15 N) in an abundant macroalga (Turbinaria ornata) together with empirical models of nutrient discharge to describe spatial and temporal patterns of nutrient enrichment in the lagoons. We then employ time series data to test whether recent increases in macroalgae are associated with nutrients. Our results revealed that patterns of N enrichment were linked to several factors, including rainfall, wave-driven circulation, and distance from anthropogenic nutrient sources, especially human sewage. Reefs near large watersheds, where inputs of N from sewage and agriculture are high, have been consistently enriched in N for at least the last decade. In many of these areas, corals have decreased and macroalgae have increased, while reefs with lower levels of N input have maintained high cover of coral and low cover of macroalgae. Importantly, these patchy phase shifts to macroalgae have occurred despite substantial islandwide increases in the density and biomass of herbivorous fishes over the time period. Together, these results indicate that nutrient loading may be an important driver of coral-to-macroalgae phase shifts in the lagoons of Moorea even though the reefs harbor an abundant and diverse herbivore assemblage. These results emphasize the important role that bottom-up factors can play in driving coral-to-macroalgae phase shifts and underscore the critical importance of watershed management for reducing inputs of nutrients and other land-based pollutants to coral reef ecosystems.

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An overarching challenge of natural resource management and biodiversity conservation is that relationships between people and nature are difficult to integrate into tools that can effectively guide decision making. Social-ecological vulnerability offers a valuable framework for identifying and understanding important social-ecological linkages, and the implications of dependencies and other feedback loops in the system. Unfortunately, its implementation at local scales has hitherto been limited due at least in part to the lack of operational tools for spatial representation of social-ecological vulnerability. We developed a method to map social-ecological vulnerability based on information on human-nature dependencies and ecosystem services at local scales. We applied our method to the small-scale fishery of Moorea, French Polynesia, by combining spatially explicit indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of both the resource (i.e., vulnerability of reef fish assemblages to fishing) and resource users (i.e., vulnerability of fishing households to the loss of fishing opportunity). Our results revealed that both social and ecological vulnerabilities varied considerably through space and highlighted areas where sources of vulnerability were high for both social and ecological subsystems (i.e., social-ecological vulnerability hotspots) and thus of high priority for management intervention. Our approach can be used to inform decisions about where biodiversity conservation strategies are likely to be more effective and how social impacts from policy decisions can be minimized. It provides a new perspective on human-nature linkages that can help guide sustainability management at local scales; delivers insights distinct from those provided by emphasis on a single vulnerability component (e.g., exposure); and demonstrates the feasibility and value of operationalizing the social-ecological vulnerability framework for policy, planning, and participatory management decisions.

Summary The Before‐After Control‐Impact Paired Series (BACIPS) design distinguishes natural spatial and temporal variability from variation induced by an environmental impact (or intervention) of interest. BACIPS is a powerful tool to derive inferences about interventions when classic experimental approaches (e.g. which rely on spatial replicates and random assignment of treatments) are not feasible or desirable. Previously applied BACIPS designs generally assume that effects are sudden, constant and long‐lived: that is, that systems exhibit ‘step‐changes’ in response to interventions. However, complex ecological interactions or gradual interventions may create delayed and/or progressive responses, potentially impeding the reliability of classic (step‐change) analyses. We propose a novel approach, the Progressive‐Change BACIPS, which generalizes and expands the scope of BACIPS analyses. We evaluate the relative performance of this approach using both simulated and real data that exhibit step‐change, linear, asymptotic and sigmoid responses following an intervention. We quantify the statistical power and accuracy of the Progressive‐Change BACIPS under varying initial population densities, intensity of spatial sampling, effect sizes and number of sampling dates After the intervention. We show that Progressive‐Change BACIPS identified the correct model among the set of candidate models under most conditions and led to accurate estimates of the parameters that were used to generate the simulated data. When data were sparse, and the dynamics complex, simpler (more parsimonious) models were favoured over the more complex models that actually generated the simulated data. Application of the Progressive‐Change BACIPS to existing data sets from the literature led to strong support for specific models (over alternatives) and led to more specific inferences than possible under the classic BACIPS approach. The Progressive‐Change BACIPS proposed here is more flexible than the original BACIPS formulation because the data are used to inform the form of the final model, rather than having the form of the model imposed on the data. This leads to better estimates of the effects of environmental impacts and the time‐scales over which they operate. As a result, the Progressive‐Change BACIPS should be applicable to a wide range of studies and should help improve investigation of time‐dependent effects. R code to perform Progressive‐Change BACIPS analysis is provided.

Mapping the spatial allocation of fishing effort while including key stakeholders in the decision making process is essential for effective fisheries management but is difficult to implement in complex small-scale fisheries that are diffuse, informal and multifaceted. Here we present a standardized but flexible approach that combines participatory mapping approaches (fishers’ spatial preference for fishing grounds, or fishing suitability) with socioeconomic approaches (spatial extrapolation of social surrogates, or fishing capacity) to generate a comprehensive map of predicted fishing effort. Using a real world case study, in Moorea, French Polynesia, we showed that high predicted fishing effort is not simply located in front of, or close to, main fishing villages with high dependence on marine resources; it also occurs where resource dependency is moderate and generally in near-shore areas and reef passages. The integrated approach we developed can contribute to addressing the recurrent lack of fishing effort spatial data through key stakeholders' (i.e., resource users) participation. It can be tailored to a wide range of social, ecological and data availability contexts, and should help improve place-based management of natural resources.

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