Assessing the impacts of nonindigenous marine macroalgae: an update of current knowledge

Nonindigenous marine species continue to be one of the foremost threats to marine biodiversity. As an update to a 2007 review of the impacts of introduced macroalgae, we assessed 142 additional publications to describe species’ impacts as well as to appraise information on the mechanisms of impact. Only 10% of the currently known nonindigenous macroalgal species were subjects of ecological impact studies, with changed community composition as the most commonly reported effect. Economic impacts were rarely published. Recent research has focused on the impacts of introduced macroalgal assemblages: red algal introductions to the Hawaiian Islands and turf algae in the Mediterranean. Several general issues were apparent. First, many publications included nonsignificant results of statistical analyses but did not report associated power. As many of the studies also had low effect and sample size, the potential for type II errors is considerable. Second, there was no widely accepted framework to categorize and compare impacts between studies. Information in this updated review was still too sparse to identify general patterns and mechanisms of impact. This is a critical knowledge gap as rates of introductions and hence impacts of nonindigenous macroalgae are expected to accelerate with climate change and increasing global trade connectivity

A review of water quality issues influencing the habitat quality in dugong protection areas

In August 1997, the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments established 16 coastal Dugong Protection Areas (DPAs) to reduce the threat of mesh nets to dugongs (Dugong dugon). The DPAs are situated in the Central and Mackay/Capricorn Sections of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) and the Hervey Bay–Great Sandy Strait region (Figure 1), and were enacted by Regulation No. 11 (1997) under the Queensland Fisheries Act 1994 and the Nature Conservation (Dugong) Conservation Plan 1999 under the Nature Conservation Act 1992. The establishment of DPAs was considered the key strategy to address the rapid decline of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) dugong population south of Cooktown

Report on status and trends of water quality and ecosystem health in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

Contributors: Rob Coles, Steve Delean, Miles Furnas, Len McKenzie, Munro Mortimer, Jochen Muller, Andrew Negri, Hugh Sweatman and Angus Thompson

First Annual Marine Monitoring Programme Report September 2005

This report provides an overview of the development of the Marine Monitoring Programme, a description of each component of the programme, an overview of the current status of the components of the programme and an outline of the implementation of the programme as at June 2005. This report is GBRMPA’s inaugural report for the Marine Monitoring Programme. The structure of this report will form the basis of Annual Reports from the GBRMPA for the life of the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan Marine Monitoring Programme

Reef Rescue Marine Monitoring Program: Report of AIMS Activities: inshore coral reef monitoring 2012. Report for Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

The coral reef monitoring component of the Reef Rescue Marine Monitoring Program (MMP) undertaken in 2012 was a continuation of activities under previous arrangements from 2005 to 2011. The coral monitoring program surveyed the cover of benthic organisms, the numbers of coral genera, the number of juvenile-sized coral colonies and sediment quality at inshore reef locations in four Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions: Wet Tropics; Burdekin; Mackay Whitsunday; and Fitzroy. Monitoring of coral recruitment also continued at three core reef sites in each of the four Regions. The completion of the eighth inshore coral reef survey under the MMP allows for updated assessments of the overall condition of inshore coral reef communities

Reef Rescue Marine Monitoring Program: Final report of AIMS activities 2011 inshore coral reef monitoring

The coral reef monitoring component of the Reef Rescue Marine Monitoring Program (MMP) undertaken in 2011 was a continuation of activities under previous arrangements from 2005 to 2010. The coral monitoring program surveyed the cover of benthic organisms, the numbers of coral genera, the number of juvenile-sized coral colonies and sediment quality at inshore reef locations in four Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions: Wet Tropics; Burdekin; Mackay Whitsunday; and Fitzroy. Monitoring of coral recruitment also continued at three core reef sites in each of the four Regions. The completion of the eighth inshore coral reef survey under the MMP allows for updated assessments of the overall condition of inshore coral reef communitie

Marine Monitoring Program: Annual report for inshore coral reef monitoring 2014-2015

This report summarises the results of coral reef monitoring activities, carried out by the Australian Institute of Marine Science as part of the Marine Monitoring Program (MMP) from 2014 to 2015

The establishment of a future NESP dredging research investment framework: NESP TWQ Hub Project 1.9

The purpose of this project was to conduct a facilitated workshop with key researchers and stakeholders to establish priorities for future research investment of the NESP Tropical Water Quality Hub (NESP TWQ) into dredging and disposal of dredged sediments in the GBR. A recent independent review of potential impacts of dredging on the biological values of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) identified a number of key knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to improve management of dredging1 activities. That review, together with the findings of the currently underway dredging science node of the Western Australian Marine Institution (WAMSI), informed the subsequent prioritisation of research topics to address the most important knowledge gaps

Marine Monitoring Program: Annual report for inshore coral reef monitoring 2015-2016

This project is supported by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority through funding from the Australian Government Reef Program, the Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring, and Reporting Program and AIMS

Microbial indicators of environmental perturbations in coral reef ecosystems

Background Coral reefs are facing unprecedented pressure on local and global scales. Sensitive and rapid markers for ecosystem stress are urgently needed to underpin effective management and restoration strategies. Although the fundamental contribution of microbes to the stability and functioning of coral reefs is widely recognised, it remains unclear how different reef microbiomes respond to environmental perturbations and whether microbiomes are sensitive enough to predict environmental anomalies that can lead to ecosystem stress. However, the lack of coral reef microbial baselines hinders our ability to study the link between shifts in microbiomes and ecosystem stress. In this study, we established a comprehensive microbial reference database for selected Great Barrier Reef sites to assess the diagnostic value of multiple free-living and host-associated reef microbiomes to infer the environmental state of coral reef ecosystems. Results A comprehensive microbial reference database, originating from multiple coral reef microbiomes (i.e. seawater, sediment, corals, sponges and macroalgae), was generated by 16S rRNA gene sequencing for 381 samples collected over the course of 16 months. By coupling this database to environmental parameters, we showed that the seawater microbiome has the greatest diagnostic value to infer shifts in the surrounding reef environment. In fact, 56% of the observed compositional variation in the microbiome was explained by environmental parameters, and temporal successions in the seawater microbiome were characterised by uniform community assembly patterns. Host-associated microbiomes, in contrast, were five-times less responsive to the environment and their community assembly patterns were generally less uniform. By applying a suite of indicator value and machine learning approaches, we further showed that seawater microbial community data provide an accurate prediction of temperature and eutrophication state (i.e. chlorophyll concentration and turbidity). Conclusion Our results reveal that free-living microbial communities have a high potential to infer environmental parameters due to their environmental sensitivity and predictability. This highlights the diagnostic value of microorganisms and illustrates how long-term coral reef monitoring initiatives could be enhanced by incorporating assessments of microbial communities in seawater. We therefore recommend timely integration of microbial sampling into current coral reef monitoring initiatives.We would like to acknowledge the contribution of the Marine Microbes(MM) and Biomes of Australian Soil Environments (BASE) projects, throughthe Australian Microbiome Initiative in the generation of data used in thispublication. The Australian Microbiome Initiative is supported by fundingfrom Bioplatforms Australia through the Australian Government NationalCollaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). The study was furtherfunded by the Advance Queensland PhD Scholarship, the Great Barrier ReefMarine Park Authority Management Award and a National EnvironmentalScience Program (NESP) grant awarded to BG.The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis,decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio