Ecosystem‐based management of coral reefs under climate change

Abstract

Coral reefs provide food and livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people as well as harbour some of the highest regions of biodiversity in the ocean. However, overexploitation, land‐use change and other local anthropogenic threats to coral reefs have left many degraded. Additionally, coral reefs are faced with the dual emerging threats of ocean warming and acidification due to rising CO 2 emissions, with dire predictions that they will not survive the century. This review evaluates the impacts of climate change on coral reef organisms, communities and ecosystems, focusing on the interactions between climate change factors and local anthropogenic stressors. It then explores the shortcomings of existing management and the move towards ecosystem‐based management and resilience thinking, before highlighting the need for climate change‐ready marine protected areas (MPAs), reduction in local anthropogenic stressors, novel approaches such as human‐assisted evolution and the importance of sustainable socialecological systems. It concludes that designation of climate change‐ready MPAs, integrated with other management strategies involving stakeholders and participation at multiple scales such as marine spatial planning, will be required to maximise coral reef resilience under climate change. However, efforts to reduce carbon emissions are critical if the long‐term efficacy of local management actions is to be maintained and coral reefs are to survive.

Peer Review #1 of "ERISNet: deep neural network for Sargassum detection along the coastline of the Mexican Caribbean (v0.2)"

“…The case of coral reefs is relevant, as they are the most threatened marine ecosystems in the world (Hoegh-Guldberg et al, 2007;Harvey et al, 2018) and although the whole ecological impacts remain still unknown, and we consider that one of the most affected areas of Sargassum accumulations is the reef lagoon. Excessive organic material leads to turbidity and reduced light causing hypoxia in seagrasses and corals.…”

Diversity of reef fish in Halang Melingkau Island, South Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…Damage to coral reefs affects the condition of fish that make the coral reef ecosystem their home (Harvey et al 2018). Reef fish live and find food in the coral reefs (sedentary), so if coral reefs are damaged, the reef fish will lose their habitat (Cole et al 2008;Fenner 2012).…”

Evaluación de la calidad del agua de los arrecifes del golfo de Cazones, sur de Cuba, a partir de algunos indicadores microbiológicos y químicos

“…Especialmente relevantes son los servicios ecosistémicos que bridan: fuentes de recursos alimenticios, amortiguadores de la erosión costera, barreras naturales para la protección contra fenómenos meteorológicos extremos, turismo (Spalding et al 2017;Thampi et al 2018). Sin embargo, en los últimos años se ha reconocido que los arrecifes coralinos constituyen uno de los ecosistemas más amenazados por los efectos de la actividad antrópica y el cambio climático (Harvey et al 2018;Williams et al 2019). Alcolado et al (2010) refieren que investigaciones de la última década sobre la salud de los arrecifes del Caribe (Aronson & Pretch, 2001;Gardner et al 2003) indican un deterioro de este ecosistema y lo atribuyen a los efectos de presiones locales y regionales entre los que se encuentran la contaminación y la sobrepesca (Ginsburg & Glynn, 1994;Hoegh-Guldberg et al 2007;Jackson et al 2014), el incremento de la temperatura (Eakin et al 2010;Hughes et al 2010), la acidificación de los océanos (Kleypas & Hoegh-Guldberg, 2008;Hughes et al 2018;Pandolfi et al 2005), además de las consecuencias propias del cambio climático (Weijerman et al 2018).…”