Reinventing residual reserves in the sea: Are we favouring ease of establishment over need for protection?

© 2014 The Authors. As systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) expand globally, there is a risk that new MPAs will be biased toward places that are remote or unpromising for extractive activities, and hence follow the trend of terrestrial protected areas in being 'residual' to commercial uses. Such locations typically provide little protection to the species and ecosystems that are most exposed to threatening processes. There are strong political motivations to establish residual reserves that minimize costs and conflicts with users of natural resources. These motivations will likely remain in place as long as success continues to be measured in terms of area (km2) protected. The global pattern of MPAs was reviewed and appears to be residual, supported by a rapid growth of large, remote MPAs. The extent to which MPAs in Australia are residual nationally and also regionally within the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Marine Park was also examined. Nationally, the recently announced Australian Commonwealth marine reserves were found to be strongly residual, making almost no difference to 'business as usual' for most ocean uses. Underlying this result was the imperative to minimize costs, but without the spatial constraints of explicit quantitative objectives for representing bioregions or the range of ecological features in highly protected zones. In contrast, the 2004 rezoning of the GBR was exemplary, and the potential for residual protection was limited by applying a systematic set of planning principles, such as representing a minimum percentage of finely subdivided bioregions. Nonetheless, even at this scale, protection was uneven between bioregions. Within-bioregion heterogeneity might have led to no-take zones being established in areas unsuitable for trawling with a risk that species assemblages differ between areas protected and areas left available for trawling. A simple four-step framework of questions for planners and policy makers is proposed to help reverse the emerging residual tendency of MPAs and maximize their effectiveness for conservation. This involves checks on the least-cost approach to establishing MPAs in order to avoid perverse outcomes

Gravity of human impacts mediates coral reef conservation gains

Coral reefs provide ecosystem goods and services for millions of people in the tropics, but reef conditions are declining worldwide. Effective solutions to the crisis facing coral reefs depend in part on understanding the context under which different types of conservation benefits can be maximized. Our global analysis of nearly 1,800 tropical reefs reveals how the intensity of human impacts in the surrounding seascape, measured as a function of human population size and accessibility to reefs (“gravity”), diminishes the effectiveness of marine reserves at sustaining reef fish biomass and the presence of top predators, even where compliance with reserve rules is high. Critically, fish biomass in high-compliance marine reserves located where human impacts were intensive tended to be less than a quarter that of reserves where human impacts were low. Similarly, the probability of encountering top predators on reefs with high human impacts was close to zero, even in high-compliance marine reserves. However, we find that the relative difference between openly fished sites and reserves (what we refer to as conservation gains) are highest for fish biomass (excluding predators) where human impacts are moderate and for top predators where human impacts are low. Our results illustrate critical ecological trade-offs in meeting key conservation objectives: reserves placed where there are moderate-to-high human impacts can provide substantial conservation gains for fish biomass, yet they are unlikely to support key ecosystem functions like higher-order predation, which is more prevalent in reserve locations with low human impacts

Meeting fisheries, ecosystem function, and biodiversity goals in a human-dominated world

The worldwide decline of coral reefs necessitates targeting management solutions that can sustain reefs and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them. However, little is known about the context in which different reef management tools can help to achieve multiple social and ecological goals. Because of nonlinearities in the likelihood of achieving combined fisheries, ecological function, and biodiversity goals along a gradient of human pressure, relatively small changes in the context in which management is implemented could have substantial impacts on whether these goals are likely to be met. Critically, management can provide substantial conservation benefits to most reefs for fisheries and ecological function, but not biodiversity goals, given their degraded state and the levels of human pressure they face

Historical Reconstruction Reveals Recovery in Hawaiian Coral Reefs

Coral reef ecosystems are declining worldwide, yet regional differences in the trajectories, timing and extent of degradation highlight the need for in-depth regional case studies to understand the factors that contribute to either ecosystem sustainability or decline. We reconstructed social-ecological interactions in Hawaiian coral reef environments over 700 years using detailed datasets on ecological conditions, proximate anthropogenic stressor regimes and social change. Here we report previously undetected recovery periods in Hawaiian coral reefs, including a historical recovery in the MHI (∼AD 1400–1820) and an ongoing recovery in the NWHI (∼AD 1950–2009+). These recovery periods appear to be attributed to a complex set of changes in underlying social systems, which served to release reefs from direct anthropogenic stressor regimes. Recovery at the ecosystem level is associated with reductions in stressors over long time periods (decades+) and large spatial scales (>103 km2). Our results challenge conventional assumptions and reported findings that human impacts to ecosystems are cumulative and lead only to long-term trajectories of environmental decline. In contrast, recovery periods reveal that human societies have interacted sustainably with coral reef environments over long time periods, and that degraded ecosystems may still retain the adaptive capacity and resilience to recover from human impacts

What Is Happening to the World’s Coral Reefs?

Coral reefs are in decline worldwide. Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which are causing ocean acidification and warming oceans, are clearly major threats to the future of coral reefs, but certainly not the only threats. Indeed, the range of threats increases with ever-increasing human populations. The consequences of local and regional activities are vast, including the ever-expanding impacts of environmental pollutants, coastal development, land-use in the watersheds, and even desertification in distant places that result in dust and smoke plumes that cross oceans and carry microbes. If a diversity of coral species and other reef-dwelling organisms is to persist and thrive in warming seas, humans must truly “think globally and act locally” to mitigate the compounding environmental damage that we continue to cause; the consequences of which are amplified by natural events such as major storms, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes

Моделювання залежності токсичності від якості грунтових вод в зоні аеропорту

Здійснено моделювання залежності токсичності від якості грунтових вод в зоні аеропорт

From principles to practice: a spatial approach to systematic conservation planning in the deep sea

Increases in the demand and price for industrial metals, combined with advances in technological capabilities have now made deep-sea mining more feasible and economically viable. In order to balance economic interests with the conservation of abyssal plain ecosystems, it is becoming increasingly important to develop a systematic approach to spatial management and zoning of the deep sea. Here, we describe an expert-driven systematic conservation planning process applied to inform science-based recommendations to the International Seabed Authority for a system of deep-sea marine protected areas (MPAs) to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem function in an abyssal Pacific region targeted for nodule mining (e.g. the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone, CCZ). Our use of geospatial analysis and expert opinion in forming the recommendations allowed us to stratify the proposed network by biophysical gradients, maximize the number of biologically unique seamounts within each subregion, and minimize socioeconomic impacts. The resulting proposal for an MPA network (nine replicate 400 × 400 km MPAs) covers 24% (1 440 000 km(2)) of the total CCZ planning region and serves as example of swift and pre-emptive conservation planning across an unprecedented area in the deep sea. As pressure from resource extraction increases in the future, the scientific guiding principles outlined in this research can serve as a basis for collaborative international approaches to ocean management