气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): The relative resilience potential of Tobago's coral reefs in the Southern Caribbean

CCPortal

DOI	10.1016/j.rsma.2024.103456
	The relative resilience potential of Tobago's coral reefs in the Southern Caribbean
	Ganase, Anjani; Solomon, Farahnaz; Whittey, Kathryn E.; Lochan, Hannah; Gomez, Jonathan; Titus, Addison
发表日期	2024
ISSN	2352-4855
起始页码	73
卷号	73
英文摘要	Coral reefs and their rich biodiversity provide ecosystem services that are critical to livelihoods and culture on island nations; they support fisheries and tourism, as well as protect coastal infrastructure. The Caribbean Sea has a long history of disturbances related to human activities, such as the over-exploitation of fishery resources and pollution, along with recent mass mortality events due to climate induced coral bleaching. As a result, coral reefs have undergone rapid coral loss and phase shifts to alternative ecological states. The trajectory of Tobago's coral health is no different with little evidence of recovery of coral communities following a major coral bleaching in 2010. There was a need to assess Tobago's coral reefs for resilience potential and gauge their vulnerability to thermal stress events to prioritise and guide strategies in resilience-based management. In 2020, anthropogenic and ecological indicators were used to assess the relative resilience potential of ten reef sites across Tobago using monitoring data collected in 2019 and 2020. Vulnerability was assessed using a matrix relating cumulative resilience to projected coral bleaching risk at each site. Outputs revealed that one site, Booby Island in northeast Tobago, had both the highest relative resilience score and the lowest risk to annual severe bleaching with a delayed onset of ten years compared to most sites. Therefore, Booby Island has relatively low vulnerability to climate induced thermal stress events. Given that Booby Island lacks any marine protection, guidelines in resilience-based management suggests that Booby Island be a priority area for conservation with targeted management to improve its recovery potential. The resilience potential assessment also revealed that indicatorsherbivore fish biomass, absence of algae and absence of coastal development - ranked as medium to low and low for most sites. To improve these indicators, island-wide strategies in fisheries management and land-based sources of pollution are needed. An analysis of indicator importance showed that coastal development and structural complexity, followed by coral recruitment then live coral cover had greater contribution to the cumulative resilience scores owing to their greater variability between sites. Future assessments could consider a heavier weighting of indicators that can directly improve the potential for recovery (coral recruitment), or the inclusion of other indicators of resistance (proportion of thermal resistant species) based on scientific literature. Nevertheless, this study provides the first quantifiable evaluation of Tobago's reefs for the purpose of marine management and restoration.
英文关键词	Caribbean coral reefs; Resilience; Tobago; Climate change; Vulnerability; Resilience-based management
语种	英语
WOS研究方向	Environmental Sciences & Ecology ; Marine & Freshwater Biology
WOS类目	Ecology ; Marine & Freshwater Biology
WOS记录号	WOS:001207616600001
来源期刊	REGIONAL STUDIES IN MARINE SCIENCE
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/306107
作者单位	Cardiff University
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Ganase, Anjani,Solomon, Farahnaz,Whittey, Kathryn E.,et al. The relative resilience potential of Tobago's coral reefs in the Southern Caribbean[J],2024,73.
APA	Ganase, Anjani,Solomon, Farahnaz,Whittey, Kathryn E.,Lochan, Hannah,Gomez, Jonathan,&Titus, Addison.(2024).The relative resilience potential of Tobago's coral reefs in the Southern Caribbean.REGIONAL STUDIES IN MARINE SCIENCE,73.
MLA	Ganase, Anjani,et al."The relative resilience potential of Tobago's coral reefs in the Southern Caribbean".REGIONAL STUDIES IN MARINE SCIENCE 73(2024).