MedSens index: The bridge between marine citizen science and coastal management

Turicchia, Eva; Cerrano, Carlo; Ghetta, Matteo; Abbiati, Marco; Ponti, Massimo

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107296

Cited by 18 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…interactive online information portals) with multiuser input has become a widely recognized and successful tool for conservation planning and conservation community education and engagement. [58] There are many examples, [58][59][60][61] such as The Sustainable Seafood Guide (www.goodfish.org.au), Global Learning for Local Solutions (marinehotpsots.org) [62] and RedMap (www.redmap. org.au), that have a track record of successful community engagement with the public to support societal adaption and community engagement in conservation outcomes, [58] as well as frameworks for establishing their success.…”

Section: Interdisciplinary Multi-user Dashboarding For Bleaching Alertsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rebuilding relationships on coral reefs: Coral bleaching knowledge‐sharing to aid adaptation planning for reef users

et al. 2021

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Coral bleaching has impacted reefs worldwide and the predictions of near-annual bleaching from over two decades ago have now been realized. While technology currently provides the means to predict large-scale bleaching, predicting reef-scale and within-reef patterns in real-time for all reef users is limited. In 2020, heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef underpinned the region's third bleaching event in 5 years. Here we review the heterogeneous emergence of bleaching across Heron Island reef habitats and discuss the oceanographic drivers that underpinned variable bleaching emergence. We do so as a case study to highlight how reef end-user groups who engage with coral reefs in different ways require targeted guidance for how, and when, to alter their use of coral reefs in response to bleaching events. Our case study of coral bleaching emergence demonstrates how within-reef scale nowcasting of coral bleaching could aid the development of accessible and equitable bleaching response strategies on coral reefs. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/N9Tgb8N-vN0 K E Y W O R D Sbleaching alerts, climate adaptation, coral bleaching, coral reef INTRODUCTION The continuing coral reefs crisisCoral reefs are now undergoing an unprecedented rate and severity of mass bleaching. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The first predictions of near-annual bleaching occurring globally by 2020 were published following the global mass bleaching event of 1998. [8] Bleaching studies since have documented that shallow reef environments, such as the lagoon, reef crest, and reef slopes to 6 m depth, are the most severely damaged as a result of bleaching. [9][10][11][12][13] These shallow-water reefs directly support the activities and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide [14][15][16] and bleaching disproportionally impacts these reef-reliant societies. [10,11] Given that different end-user groups utilize within-reef habitats in a

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Section: Interdisciplinary Multi-user Dashboarding For Bleaching Alertsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rebuilding relationships on coral reefs: Coral bleaching knowledge‐sharing to aid adaptation planning for reef users

et al. 2021

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“…Coastal monitoring techniques have evolved greatly in the latter half of this century, particularly with remote sensing techniques and more recently crowd-sourced data 13 . With the growth of citizen science programmes in recent years, new challenges to integrate the observations into coastal management activities and coastal conservation are emerging 14 , 15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel use of social media to assess and improve coastal flood forecasts and hazard alerts

Brown

Yelland

Pullen

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Coastal communities and infrastructure need protection from flooding and wave overtopping events. Assessment of hazard prediction methods, used in sea defence design, defence performance inspections and forecasting services, requires observations at the land-sea interface but these are rarely collected. Here we show how a database of hindcast overtopping events, and the conditions that cause them, can be built using qualitative overtopping information obtained from social media. We develop a database for a case study site at Crosby in the Northwest of England, use it to test the standard methods applied in operational flood forecasting services and new defence design, and suggest improvements to these methods. This novel approach will become increasingly important to deliver long-term, cost-effective coastal management solutions as sea-levels rise and coastal populations grow. At sites with limited, or no, monitoring or forecasting services, this approach, especially if combined with citizen science initiatives, could underpin the development of simplified early warning systems.

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“…These data can also help in tracking mass mortality events and assess the possible effects of climate change (Pairaud et al, 2014;Ponti et al, 2018;Turicchia et al, 2018;Garrabou et al, 2019) and the invasion of the non-indigenous species Caulerpa taxifolia and Caulerpa cylindracea (Montefalcone et al, 2015;Cerrano et al, 2017). Moreover, the dataset can be used in assessing the protected and sensitive species richness within the marine protected areas (Turicchia et al, 2015(Turicchia et al, , 2016Cerrano et al, 2017), and in offering an effective monitoring tool for the Mediterranean subtidal rocky coastal habitats through the MedSens biotic index (Turicchia et al, 2021a).…”

Section: Resulting Data and Their Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, except for RCMed U-CEM, none of the other initiatives mentioned here for the Mediterranean Sea provide information on the absence of key species, a "dark diversity" (sensu Partel et al, 2011) usually neglected but potentially very useful in assessing biological integrity, ecological status, and the effects of global changes. The application of the RCMed U-CEM protocol may generate a range of direct societal impacts, including a higher public awareness of environmental threats and the involvement of stakeholders (e.g., tourists, divers, and diving centers) in the monitoring and conservation of coastal marine environments (Turicchia et al, 2021a). Therefore, it may enhance the collaboration between coastal management authorities, stakeholders, and researchers, increasing the acceptability of management decisions and enabling more participatory conservation tactics (Markantonatou et al, 2013;de Francesco et al, 2017;Lucrezi et al, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most of them are sessile or sedentary with a limited home range; therefore, they cannot escape the local human disturbances and changes in environmental conditions. In terms of both resistance and resilience of local populations, their sensitivities to pressures were assessed and employed to develop the MedSens biotic index (see Supplementary materials in Turicchia et al, 2021a).…”

Section: Selected Taxamentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Reef Check Mediterranean Underwater Coastal Environment Monitoring Protocol

Turicchia

Ponti

Rossi³

et al. 2021

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Since 2001, trained snorkelers, freedivers, and scuba diver volunteers (collectively called EcoDivers) have been recording data on the distribution, abundance, and bathymetric range of 43 selected key marine species along the Mediterranean Sea coasts using the Reef Check Mediterranean Underwater Coastal Environment Monitoring (RCMed U-CEM) protocol. The taxa, including algae, invertebrates, and fishes, were selected by a combination of criteria, including ease of identification and being a key indicator of shifts in the Mediterranean subtidal habitats due to local pressures and climate change. The dataset collected using the RCMed U-CEM protocol is openly accessible across different platforms and allows for various uses. It has proven to be useful for several purposes, such as monitoring the ecological status of Mediterranean coastal environments, assessing the effects of human impacts and management interventions, as well as complementing scientific papers on species distribution and abundance, distribution modeling, and historical series. Also, the commitment of volunteers promotes marine stewardship and environmental awareness in marine conservation. Here, we describe the RCMed U-CEM protocol from training volunteers to recording, delivering, and sharing data, including the quality assurance and control (QA/QC) procedures.

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MedSens index: The bridge between marine citizen science and coastal management

Cited by 18 publications

References 52 publications

Rebuilding relationships on coral reefs: Coral bleaching knowledge‐sharing to aid adaptation planning for reef users

Rebuilding relationships on coral reefs: Coral bleaching knowledge‐sharing to aid adaptation planning for reef users

Novel use of social media to assess and improve coastal flood forecasts and hazard alerts

The Reef Check Mediterranean Underwater Coastal Environment Monitoring Protocol

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