Coral Reefs

Coral Reefs

Coral Reefs

  1. Gross, M. (2016). Can science rescue coral reefs?. Current Biology, 12(26), R481-R484.

The article demonstrates the complex lifestyle of coral reefs together with challenges they

the face of polyps and their alga Symbian they depend on as the pH, sunlight, and temperature.

Even though the polyps are animals, they are immobile in their adult life so they can’t flee if environmental conditions become dangerous. However, the author does not believe that science can rescue the coral reefs. Thus predicting its extinctions by mid of this century.  This is due to an event known as coral bleaching,  which is the co-operation between polyps and symbiont break down as the polyps expel the photosynthetic organism. One of the possible triggers for heat-induced bleaching is the increased oxygen production of the symbiont this is one of the worst challenges as it affects around a third of the coral reefs globally. This calamity is as a result

Of water being too warm for long Due to global warming; again the author demonstrates why it takes over decades to recover from coral bleaching and this is due to natural calamities such as Strong Elnino and global warming to add on is ocean acidification. Hence scientist cannot solve Ways have been suggested on the possible attempts to save the coral reefs such as finding information about diversity, sensitivity, and resilience of existing coral population but still it stands out to be a big challenge to save the corals.

 

2Aswani,S.,Mumby,P.J.,Baker,A.C.,Christie,P.,McCook,L.J.,Steneck,R.S.,&Richmond,R.H.(2015). Scientific Frontiers in the management of coral reefs Frontiers in Marine Science, 2, 50.

This article presents the report on how we can be built a stronger support for the coral reef management and improve the efficiency of the intervention.

Coral reefs are the iconic marine ecosystem for their beauty and biodiversity .yet they sustain a wealth of economic, cultural and ecosystem services. Despite their great importance they face a long list of threats and are documented to be 94 in a rapid decline in most regions. Systematic reviews of scientific 124 frontiers in natural and social science research that can help build a stronger support for 125 reef management and improve the efficacy of the intervention

  1. I) Enhancing the Case for reef Conservation and management
  2. a) Proving causality once a stressor has been identified

Coral reefs are exposed to a variety of stressors, both natural and anthropogenic

Though there are two challenges to implement effective coral reef management practices. These are the inability to clearly identify the cause and affect the relationship between stressor exposure and coral responses

  1. b) Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services

Another challenge for coral reef sustainability is reversing the widespread perfection that reef protection is a trade-off with economic goals positive economic and environmental outcome are not mutual exclusive.

  1. II) Dealing with local Stressors on Reefs

These involve two approaches: Bottom-up drivers of reef health and Top-down effects on coral reefs.

There are both physical and chemical effects of runoff and nutrients, which cause reductions in water and substratum quality. These translate into reduced fecundity of coral and other organisms.

III) Dealing with Global Climate change Impacts

  1. A) Genetic intervention strategies

Reefs should be managed for resilience intervention activities that might help coral survive climate change are: identifying, propagating and restoring heat-tolerant corals on affected reefs, Translocating corals to local reefs from distant locations that are already adapted to warmer conditions and lastly inoculating corals with heat- tolerant symbiotic algae to boost their thermal tolerance.

3 Hughes, T. P., Barnes, M. L., Bellwood, D. R., Cinner, J. E., Cumming, G. S., Jackson, J. B., … & Palumbi, S. R. (2017). Coral reefs in the Anthropocene.  

Coral reefs support immense biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services to millions of people. Yet reefs are degrading rapidly in response to numerous anthropogenic drivers. In the coming centuries, reefs will run the gauntlet of climate change and rising temperature will transform them into new configurations, unlike anything before by humans. Returning reefs to past configurations is no longer an option. Instead, the global challenge is to steer reefs through the Anthropocene era in a way that maintains their biological functions.

The two patches that research used are reefs tolerant and vulnerable array to investigate the potential impact of the environment change on the trophodynamics of the reef mesopredators and their prey community. The tolerant constituted of coral taxa that reduce its exposure to bleaching while the vulnerable consisted of a complex structure that helps with high thermal vulnerability.

  1. Mumby, P. J., & Anthony, K. (2015). Resilience metrics to inform ecosystem management under global change with application to coral reefs. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6(9), 1088-1096.

Resilience has been a difficult concept to operationalize Two form of Resilience that is recognized by ecological literature are Ecological resilience which concerns ecosystems that possess alternative equilibrium states and has been operationalized in few systems Engineering resilience was developed for an ecosystem with single attractor but its use is confined to systems that gravitate towards a stable equilibrium.

We present a general method to quantity engineering resilience that can be applied irrespective of an ecosystem’s stability or proclivity to obey multiple attractors. The technique uses a system model to distinguish the effects globally driven and essentially unmanageable) stressors such as climate change and ocean acidification from regional- and local-scale stressors on the ecosystem

We illustrate the technique using a simple coral reef model and find its ability to calculate the impacts of managing crown –of thorns starfish against a background of increasing stress from climate change and ocean acidification

Resilience analyses use our approach to help assess the relative importance of local or regional scale management interventions under varying degree of global environment change even if they preside over long-term ecosystem decline, several frameworks of varying complexity are provided to guide the linkage of resilience metrics to environmental decision-making.

  1. Wynveen, C. J., & Sutton, S. G. (2015). Engaging the public in climate change-related pro-environmental behaviors to protect coral reefs: The role of public trust in the management agency. Marine Policy, 53, 131-140.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role the authority trust in the management of information about climate change, plays in relationships among antecedents to climate change-related pro-environmental behavior.

Data collected from a survey of Australian resident living adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park states that lower intensities of institutional trust were associated with the less biocentric worldview, a lower reported awareness of consequences of the impacts of climate change and a lower sense of obligation to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. Personal experience goes a long way in making people aware of the sites. This is because people tend to protect places they have already visited. Therefore personal experiences help in shaping attitudes of pro-environmental behaviors and influencing protection of the natural resource. Ensuring people have the right attitude towards resource protection also is a crucial thing, for example, residents that live along the Great Barrier Reef disagree in their beliefs on climate change; some are obligated to protect the natural resource while others care less about the conservation of the natural resource.

Incorporation of people into the management of the natural resources a very vital process of when it comes to conservation of natural resources. Nonetheless, misunderstanding concerning the heritage areas of the world and other factors such as inadequate resources often affect incorporation of people when it comes to the management of resources. Poor development of policies that lack scientific investigation evidence also has contributed to failure when it comes to the conservation of natural resources. Therefore the inclusion of social science in the conservation of coral reef would go a long way in ensuring new partnerships, natural resource management and meaningful contributions to research and resource management. Ensuring that the stakeholders that are involved trust each other has been a source of concern for the protection of the Great Barrier Reef. The stakeholders have been having a problem with trust when it comes to the protection of the coral reef. This can be solved by ensuring that the stakeholders involved in the management of the coral reef come to a point of trusting one another so that they can work as one team during making the decision for protection of the reef. In conclusion, the natural resource managers can also help in ensuring that people are able to relate to the natural resources in an ecologically friendly-way

  1. Gross, M. (2016). Can science rescue coral reefs?. Current Biology, 12(26), R481-R484.

The article demonstrates the complex lifestyle of coral reefs together with challenges they

the face of polyps and their alga Symbian they depend on as the pH, sunlight, and temperature.

Even though the polyps are animals, they are immobile in their adult life so they can’t flee if environmental conditions become dangerous. However, the author does not believe that science can rescue the coral reefs. Thus predicting its extinctions by mid of this century.  This is due to an event known as coral bleaching,  which is the co-operation between polyps and symbiont break down as the polyps expel the photosynthetic organism. One of the possible triggers for heat-induced bleaching is the increased oxygen production of the symbiont this is one of the worst challenges as it affects around a third of the coral reefs globally. This calamity is as a result

Of water being too warm for long Due to global warming; again the author demonstrates why it takes over decades to recover from coral bleaching and this is due to natural calamities such as Strong Elnino and global warming to add on is ocean acidification. Hence scientist cannot solve Ways have been suggested on the possible attempts to save the coral reefs such as finding information about diversity, sensitivity, and resilience of existing coral population but still it stands out to be a big challenge to save the corals.

 

2Aswani,S.,Mumby,P.J.,Baker,A.C.,Christie,P.,McCook,L.J.,Steneck,R.S.,&Richmond,R.H.(2015). Scientific Frontiers in the management of coral reefs Frontiers in Marine Science, 2, 50.

This article presents the report on how we can be built a stronger support for the coral reef management and improve the efficiency of the intervention.

Coral reefs are the iconic marine ecosystem for their beauty and biodiversity .yet they sustain a wealth of economic, cultural and ecosystem services. Despite their great importance they face a long list of threats and are documented to be 94 in a rapid decline in most regions. Systematic reviews of scientific 124 frontiers in natural and social science research that can help build a stronger support for 125 reef management and improve the efficacy of the intervention

  1. I) Enhancing the Case for reef Conservation and management
  2. a) Proving causality once a stressor has been identified

Coral reefs are exposed to a variety of stressors, both natural and anthropogenic

Though there are two challenges to implement effective coral reef management practices. These are the inability to clearly identify the cause and affect the relationship between stressor exposure and coral responses

  1. b) Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services

Another challenge for coral reef sustainability is reversing the widespread perfection that reef protection is a trade-off with economic goals positive economic and environmental outcome are not mutual exclusive.

  1. II) Dealing with local Stressors on Reefs

These involve two approaches: Bottom-up drivers of reef health and Top-down effects on coral reefs.

There are both physical and chemical effects of runoff and nutrients, which cause reductions in water and substratum quality. These translate into reduced fecundity of coral and other organisms.

III) Dealing with Global Climate change Impacts

  1. A) Genetic intervention strategies

Reefs should be managed for resilience intervention activities that might help coral survive climate change are: identifying, propagating and restoring heat-tolerant corals on affected reefs, Translocating corals to local reefs from distant locations that are already adapted to warmer conditions and lastly inoculating corals with heat- tolerant symbiotic algae to boost their thermal tolerance.

3 Hughes, T. P., Barnes, M. L., Bellwood, D. R., Cinner, J. E., Cumming, G. S., Jackson, J. B., … & Palumbi, S. R. (2017). Coral reefs in the Anthropocene.  

Coral reefs support immense biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services to millions of people. Yet reefs are degrading rapidly in response to numerous anthropogenic drivers. In the coming centuries, reefs will run the gauntlet of climate change and rising temperature will transform them into new configurations, unlike anything before by humans. Returning reefs to past configurations is no longer an option.Instead, the global challenge is to steer reefs through the Anthropocene era in a way that maintains their biological functions.

The two patches that research used are reefs tolerant and vulnerable array to investigate the potential impact of the environment change on the trophodynamics of the reef mesopredators and their prey community. The tolerant constituted of coral taxa that reduce its exposure to bleaching while the vulnerable consisted of a complex structure that helps with high thermal vulnerability.

  1. Mumby, P. J., & Anthony, K. (2015). Resilience metrics to inform ecosystem management under global change with application to coral reefs. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6(9), 1088-1096.

Resilience has been a difficult concept to operationalize Two form of Resilience that is recognized by ecological literature are Ecological resilience which concerns ecosystems that possess alternative equilibrium states and has been operationalized in few systems Engineering resilience was developed for an ecosystem with single attractor but its use is confined to systems that gravitate towards a stable equilibrium.

We present a general method to quantity engineering resilience that can be applied irrespective of an ecosystem’s stability or proclivity to obey multiple attractors. The technique uses a system model to distinguish the effects globally driven and essentially unmanageable) stressors such as climate change and ocean acidification from regional- and local-scale stressors on the ecosystem

We illustrate the technique using a simple coral reef model and find its ability to calculate the impacts of managing crown –of thorns starfish against a background of increasing stress from climate change and ocean acidification

Resilience analyses use our approach to help assess the relative importance of local or regional scale management interventions under varying degree of global environment change even if they preside over long-term ecosystem decline, several frameworks of varying complexity are provided to guide the linkage of resilience metrics to environmental decision-making.

  1. Wynveen, C. J., & Sutton, S. G. (2015). Engaging the public in climate change-related pro-environmental behaviors to protect coral reefs: The role of public trust in the management agency. Marine Policy, 53, 131-140.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role the authority trust in the management of information about climate change, plays in relationships among antecedents to climate change-related pro-environmental behavior.

Data collected from a survey of Australian resident living adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park states that lower intensities of institutional trust were associated with the less biocentric worldview, a lower reported awareness of consequences of the impacts of climate change and a lower sense of obligation to adopt pro-environmental behaviors. Personal experience goes a long way in making people aware of the sites. This is because people tend to protect places they have already visited. Therefore personal experiences help in shaping attitudes of pro-environmental behaviors and influencing protection of the natural resource. Ensuring people have the right attitude towards resource protection also is a crucial thing, for example, residents that live along the Great Barrier Reef disagree in their beliefs on climate change; some are obligated to protect the natural resource while others care less about the conservation of the natural resource.

Incorporation of people into the management of the natural resources a very vital process of when it comes to conservation of natural resources. Nonetheless, misunderstanding concerning the heritage areas of the world and other factors such as inadequate resources often affect incorporation of people when it comes to the management of resources. Poor development of policies that lack scientific investigation evidence also has contributed to failure when it comes to the conservation of natural resources. Therefore the inclusion of social science in the conservation of coral reef would go a long way in ensuring new partnerships, natural resource management and meaningful contributions to research and resource management. Ensuring that the stakeholders that are involved trust each other has been a source of concern for the protection of the Great Barrier Reef. The stakeholders have been having a problem with trust when it comes to the protection of the coral reef. This can be solved by ensuring that the stakeholders involved in the management of the coral reef come to a point of trusting one another so that they can work as one team during making the decision for protection of the reef. In conclusion, the natural resource managers can also help in ensuring that people are able to relate to the natural resources in an ecologically friendly-way