Title: The survival of coral reefs requires integrated watershed-based management activities and marine conservation
Abstract:oral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems, and they are rivaled in biodiversity by few terrestrial ecosystems. They support people directly and indirectly by building islands and atolls...oral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems, and they are rivaled in biodiversity by few terrestrial ecosystems. They support people directly and indirectly by building islands and atolls. They protect shorelines from coastal erosion, support fisheries of economic and cultural value, provide diving-related tourism and serve as habitats for organisms that produce natural products of biomedical interest. They are also museums of the planet’s natural wealth and places of incredible natural beauty. Despite their recognized biological, economic and aesthetic value, coral reefs are being destroyed at an alarming rate throughout the world. Some countries have seen 50 percent of their coral reefs destroyed by human activities in the past 15 years. Some human influences are acute—for example, mining reefs for limestone, dumping mine tailings on them, fishing with explosives and cyanide, and land reclamation. Reefs that experience such insults often die; those that deteriorate but survive cannot recover to their original health as long as the disturbances continue. In other countries the disturbances are more chronic than acute. Reefs are assaulted by muddy runoff, nutrients and pesticides from adjacent river catchments, overfishing and global-warming effects. These disturbances affect the key parameters permitting reef resilience: water and substratum quality. As a result, corals fail to reproduce successfully, and the coral larvae arriving from more pristine reefs are unable to settle and thrive on substrata covered by mud, cyanobacteria or fleshy algae. Coral populations thus fail to recover or reestablish themselves. Can science help save coral reefs? Despite much talk about managing coral reefs, the potential role of science is limited. But it is important: Scientists can demonstrate the key processes controlling the health of coral reefs and how human activities damage them. Then, we can hope, land-use managers and marine-resources managers will be able to modify human behavior to reduce or reverse damage to coral reefs. Toward this end we have developed a large-scale model for illuminating reef degradation and predicting the impact of future human activity.Read More
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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