Evaluating the impact of accounting for coral cover in large‐scale marine conservation prioritizations

Ans Vercammen,Elizabeth Selig,Estradivari Estradivari,Gabby Ahmadia,Thomas Dallison,Jill Harris,Andrew T Knight,Shinta Pardede,Efin Muttaqin,Maria Beger,Jennifer Mcgowan,Clare Embling

doi:10.1111/ddi.12957

Abstract

AbstractAimMega‐diverse coral reef ecosystems are declining globally, necessitating conservation prioritizations to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services of sites with high functional integrity to promote persistence. In practice however, the design of marine‐protected area (MPA) systems often relies on broad classifications of habitat class and size, making the tacit assumption that all reefs are of comparable condition. We explored the impact of this assumption through a novel, pragmatic approach for incorporating variability in coral cover in a large‐scale regional spatial prioritization plan.LocationThe Coral Triangle.MethodsWe developed a spatially explicit predictive model of hard coral cover based on freely available macro‐ecological data to generate a complete regional map of coral cover as a proxy for reef condition. We then incorporate this information in spatial conservation prioritization software Marxan to design an MPA system that meets specific conservation objectives.ResultsWe discover prioritizations using area‐based representation of reef habitat alone may overestimate the conservation benefit, defined as the amount of hard coral cover protected, by up to 64%. We find substantial differences in conservation priorities and an overall increase in habitat quality metrics when accounting for predicted coral cover.Main conclusionsThis study shows that including habitat condition in a large‐scale marine spatial prioritization is feasible within time and resource constraints, and calls for increased implementation, and evaluation, of such ecologically relevant planning approaches to enhance potential conservation effectiveness.

Highlights

Identifying where and how to allocate scarce conservation re‐ sources to ensure the persistence of biodiversity is a fundamental challenge of the 21st century (Margules & Pressey, 2000)
The alternative scenarios we examined consider coral reef condition in different ways to guide the expansion of existing marine‐protected area (MPA) systems across the Coral Triangle
Habitat condition or proxies thereof have rarely been incorporated into MPA design

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

Identifying where and how to allocate scarce conservation re‐ sources to ensure the persistence of biodiversity is a fundamental challenge of the 21st century (Margules & Pressey, 2000). Well‐designed MPAs would target conservation of, for example, fish biomass and coral cover to promote adequacy (Selig & Bruno, 2010), and, where possible, link these to ecological connectivity requirements (Beger et al, 2015; Magris et al, 2017) Such spatially explicit informa‐ tion on reef condition is lacking for much of the marine environ‐ ment, which necessitates the use of surrogate information such as reef extent or bioregionalizations to make decisions about where to allocate resources (e.g., Fernandes et al, 2005; Green et al, 2014; Beger et al, 2015; Jumin et al, 2017). Heterogeneous stress events for instance can alter coral cover in any site within short time frames, suggesting a need to update and ground truth plans before implementation

| METHODS

Findings

| DISCUSSION