Prioritizing Key Resilience Indicators to Support Coral Reef Management in a Changing Climate

Abstract

Managing coral reefs for resilience to climate change is a popular concept but has been difficult to implement because the empirical scientific evidence has either not been evaluated or is sometimes unsupportive of theory, which leads to uncertainty when considering methods and identifying priority reefs. We asked experts and reviewed the scientific literature for guidance on the multiple physical and biological factors that affect the ability of coral reefs to resist and recover from climate disturbance. Eleven key factors to inform decisions based on scaling scientific evidence and the achievability of quantifying the factors were identified. Factors important to resistance and recovery, which are important components of resilience, were not strongly related, and should be assessed independently. The abundance of resistant (heat-tolerant) coral species and past temperature variability were perceived to provide the greatest resistance to climate change, while coral recruitment rates, and macroalgae abundance were most influential in the recovery process. Based on the 11 key factors, we tested an evidence-based framework for climate change resilience in an Indonesian marine protected area. The results suggest our evidence-weighted framework improved upon existing un-weighted methods in terms of characterizing resilience and distinguishing priority sites. The evaluation supports the concept that, despite high ecological complexity, relatively few strong variables can be important in influencing ecosystem dynamics. This is the first rigorous assessment of factors promoting coral reef resilience based on their perceived importance, empirical evidence, and feasibility of measurement. There were few differences between scientists' perceptions of factor importance and the scientific evidence found in journal publications but more before and after impact studies will be required to fully test the validity of all the factors. The methods here will increase the feasibility and defensibility of including key resilience metrics in evaluations of coral reefs, as well as reduce costs. Adaptation, marine protected areas, priority setting, resistance, recovery.

Validation of Reef-Scale Thermal Stress Satellite Products for Coral Bleaching Monitoring

“…Bleaching has also been linked to the SST variability for the warm season [26] and frequency of past thermal disturbance. Past temperature variability has also been identified as a key factor for reef resilience [27]. Due to the short temporal domain of the 5 km products, each of these metrics was calculated using the Pathfinder version 5.2 SST dataset , an official NOAA Climate Data Record for SST [15].…”

Biodiversity and Resilience of Ecosystem Functions

“…The development of robust, yet cost-effective, indicators is likely to be dependent on proxy measures that can be both derived from existing monitoring [4] and shown to covary with resilience. For example, an attempt to assess importance and feasibility of resilience indicators based on expert opinion for coral reef systems is provided by McClanahan et al [100]. Validation of practicable proxy measures is then important to ensure they are reliable.…”

A framework for assessing risk to coastal ecosystems in Taiwan due to climate change

“…Of particular concern is how ocean warming, ocean acidification, and sea level rise will interact with local socioeconomic development, such as land use, shoreline alterations, pollution, urbanization, and overfishing, and how these impacts can be mitigated. Each of these changes in the ocean and their interactions are contributing to notable impacts on global biodiversity and ecological functioning (McClanahan et al 2012). Although these changes in the ocean are occurring now, the rate of change and the spatial and temporal variability in these three factors, and the ecosystem responses pose considerable uncertainty (Simas et al 2001).…”