Fe–Cr–Ni–Co–Cux coatings for marine and coastal infrastructure protection from corrosion, tribocorrosion and biofouling

Ocean conservation boosts climate change mitigation and adaptation

Integrating coral reef ecosystem services into marine planning

Marine protected areas (MPAs) remain one of the principal strategies for marine conservation globally. MPAs are highly heterogeneous in terms of physical features such as size and shape, habitats included, management bodies undertaking management, goals, level of funding, and extent of enforcement. Economic research related to MPAs initially measured financial, gross, and net values generated by the habitats, most commonly fisheries, tourism, coastal protection, and non-use values. Bioeconomic modeling also generated important insights into the complexities of fisheries-related outcomes at MPAs. MPAs require a significant investment in public funds for design, designation, and ongoing management, which have associated opportunity costs. Therefore cost-benefit analysis has been increasingly required to justify this investment and demonstrate their benefits over time. The true economic value of MPAs is the value of protection, not the resource being protected. There is substantial evidence that MPAs should increase recreational values due to improvements in biodiversity and habitat quality, but assumptions that MPAs will generate such improvements may not be justified. Indeed, there remains no equivocal demonstration of spillover in fisheries adjacent to MPAs, due in part to the variability inherent in ecological and socio-economic processes and limited evidence of tourism benefits that are biologically or socio-cultural sustainable. There is a need for carefully designed valuation studies that compare values for areas within MPAs compared the same areas without management (the counterfactual scenario). The ecosystem service framework has become widely adopted as a way of characterizing goods and services that contribute directly or indirectly to human welfare. Quantitative analyses of the marginal changes to ecosystem services due to MPAs remains rare due to the requirements of large amounts of fine-grained data, relatively undeveloped bio-physical models for the majority of services, and the complexities of incorporating ecological nonlinearities and threshold effects. In addition while some services are synergistic (so that double counting is difficult to avoid), others are traded off. Such marginal ecosystem service values are highly context specific, which limits the accuracy associated with benefits transfer. A number of studies published since 2000 have made advances in this area, and this is a rapidly developing field of research. While MPAs have been promoted as a sustainable development tool, there is evidence of significant distributive impacts of MPAs over time, over different time scales and between different stakeholders, including unintended costs to local stakeholders. Research suggests that support and compliance is predicated on the costs and benefits generated locally, which is a major determinant of MPA performance. Better understanding of socio-economic impacts will help to align incentives with MPA objectives. Further research is needed to value supporting and regulating services and to elucidate how ecosystem service provision is affected by MPAs in different conditions and contexts, over time and compared to unmanaged areas, to guide adaptive management.

BackgroundCoral reefs offer valuable ecosystem goods and services, such as coastal protection, erosion regulation, fishery, biodiversity, habitat and nursery grounds. However, they face threats from anthropogenic activities, including poor water quality, global warming, coastal development and unsustainable fisheries. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) provide a structured and holistic approach in addressing these threats. Regular monitoring and assessment of these MPAs are crucial components in evaluating the MPAs design and effectiveness. Two coral reefs (i.e. Poblacion and Kadurong Reefs) were established as MPAs in Liloan, Cebu, Philippines to protect crucial habitat and biodiversity with the hope of improving fisheries by avoiding fish stock disintegration. These coral reefs provide shelter to many commercially-significant fish species, supporting subsistence and livelihood in the community. These MPAs are not only biologically rich, but they also support socio-economic stability. Hence, management and protection of the coral reefs in the MPAs of Liloan, Cebu is of paramount importance. To formulate conservation and applicable management measures, research and monitoring should be in place. This paper presents the data collected from the short term monitoring in the Poblaction and Kadurong Reefs. The paper describes an important set of data that can be used by the stakeholders to benchmark biophysical assessments for management of marine-protected areas in Liloan.New informationThis data paper provides baseline information on the health of the coral reefs of the MPAs in Liloan, Cebu. Datasets covering physico-chemical and biological parameters inclusive of water quality, coral reef cover, fish and plankton occurrence and abundance were determined using the standard protocols for surveying tropical marine resources. The results will serve as a benchmark in formulating guidelines and implementing relevant policies for the effective management and protection of the MPAs in Liloan, Cebu, Philippines.

Effect of coastal marine protection on childhood health: an exploratory study

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are widely used as place-based protective measures for restoring and safeguarding marine biodiversity. When ecological connectivity is taken into account during design and management, the results can lead to more effective and resilient MPAs and MPA networks. This publication provides 13 ‘Rules of Thumb’ to support more consistent efforts by MPA managers and marine conservation professionals to implement connectivity conservation and better measure progress towards global conservation targets. These purpose-built tools are intended to inform more effective management and protection of oceans and coasts by covering a diversity of science and policy issues. They can also be used to progress system-based marine conservation as an essential component of national, transboundary, and global policies that establish greater connectivity across borders and at larger scales.

Marine ecosystems encompass around 70% of the earth's surface and contribute significantly to human well-being by giving social, economic, and environmental advantages to the world's growing population. Marine ecosystems provide a variety of different services that are crucial for human well-being, in addition to being a major source of food, income, and employment. Coastal protection, marine biodiversity, and carbon sequestration are among them. Human activities, on the other hand, place diverse stresses on marine ecosystems, which are predicted to increase, resulting in cumulative impacts on marine ecosystems and biodiversity. As a result, significant efforts have been made around the world to create marine protected areas (MPAs) in order to safeguard and preserve biodiversity, as well as natural and cultural resources. They're usually made by designating zones and prescribing permissible and prohibited activities within those zones. MPAs include the Open Ocean, coastal areas, intertidal zones, and estuaries, among other habitats. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which established the worldwide framework for marine governance in 1982, obligated all governments to protect and conserve the marine environment. In 2000, MPAs covered 0.7% of the Ocean; since then, MPA coverage has increased by more than tenfold to 7.68%. The MPA network will need to be ecologically representative, equitably and efficiently maintained, and of particular importance for ecosystem services in order to meet the aim.

Marine Protected Areas (MPA) were established in the Philippines to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems. In the Municipality of Sagñay, Philippines, the Atulayan Bay Fish Sanctuary and Marine Reserve (Atulayan MPA) was established three decades ago for such purpose. However, the expected socio-ecological impacts remained elusive based on biophysical and socioeconomic indicators. Community-Based Coastal Resource Management (CBCRM) was one approach used by the municipality to engage resource users and communities in MPA management. This study assessed the preferences of resource users toward the ecosystem services of the Atulayan MPA and the underlying value orientation that influenced these preferences. Specifically, it described the ecosystem services, examined the values of resource users, and analyzed the stated preferences of resource users toward the ecosystem services based on their value orientation from a gender-related perspective. Survey was conducted in the village of Atulayan with 50 respondents and in Nato with 250. Key informant interview was conducted with the fisheries technologist of the Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO). Findings revealed that both resource users and residents in the two villages espoused the values of conservation and self-transcendence, while most of them preferred the ecosystem services of fisheries, habitat, coastal protection, and research and education. This study recommends that the MAO strengthen engagement with resource users and communities in MPA management by using approaches that are aligned with their value orientation and stated preferences. This would increase the likelihood that MPA-related interventions may be supported and actively engaged in by the resource users.

Marine ecosystem health is threatened globally by overfishing and habitat damages, among other things, creating major challenges for the sustainability and governance of aquatic environments. With a push toward increasing coastal and ocean protection through spatial management measures, an overlap between these marine protected areas (MPAs) and small-scale fishing grounds is expected to occur. Since MPAs are never established in a vacuum, there is a need to account for the ecological, social, and governance contexts into which they are being inserted. However, such considerations are not common, and the lack of integration of these essential elements in the design and the implementation of MPAs has often resulted in lowering their governability. We illustrate this tendency using a case study of the Marine National Park of Currais Islands in Southern Brazil, which was established without any consultation with small-scale fishers whose livelihoods and well-being depend on the use of the area in question. Using a governability assessment framework, we examine the diversity, complexity, dynamics, and scale issues associated with the natural, social, and governing systems. In addition to revealing that governance of this MPA is a “wicked problem,” the study shows that the MPA adds more complexity to a system where issues such as lack of trust and low governing capacity exist.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a key tool in ecosystem-based management, implementing a spatial approach to biodiversity conservation in the oceans. While the use of protected areas to conserve and/or protect resources has a long history, including centuries of royal hunting areas and traditionally managed areas, the modern conceptualization of protected areas dates to the late 19th century, with the designation of Yellowstone National Park in the United States in 1872. The first similar formally protected area with a marine component was the Royal National Park MPA in New South Wales, Australia, in 1879, although it also included a terrestrial component, as do many MPAs in coastal areas. The land/sea interface poses a challenge to delineating between terrestrial and marine parks, adding to a complex jurisdictional and legal landscape. Consequently, it is helpful to categorize MPAs based on the broad definition for protected areas offered by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature): a clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values. As evidenced in this definition, discussions surrounding MPAs have become more amenable to soft-law approaches and/or less formal legal designations, and they are also increasingly tied to the concept of ecosystem services (i.e., protecting systems that in turn provide people with services that would be costly to otherwise reproduce, such as the coastal protection provided by mangroves and coral reefs). Of course, there are also strong arguments for protecting nature for its own intrinsic value, as well as the value it holds for non-human species. In order to fully understand the promise and efficacy of MPAs, it is necessary to examine their legal basis, their effectiveness as tools, how they can work together as networks to achieve ecological objectives, and how the global community is using protected area targets and large-scale MPAs to maximize coverage. However, it is also important to consider the socioeconomic dimensions of MPAs, as these often lead to problems with their success, including concerns with equity and justice and how well they are governed. Looking forward, future work in the field of MPAs includes ensuring they are achieving their ecological objectives, by ensuring enough areas are closed to all extractive uses, and developing a regime for designating them in areas beyond national jurisdiction, on the high seas.

Marine conservation lags behind terrestrial in the establishment of protected areas. This was recognized by the Convention on Biological Diversity, whose members, in 2004, agreed to establish “comprehensive, effectively managed, and ecologically representative” systems of marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2012. Halfway toward this target date, we look at the coverage of the world's 5045 MPAs from a biogeographic perspective. Only 4.09% of continental shelf areas are incorporated within MPAs, although coverage rises to 12.1% in a narrow coastal belt. Approximately half of all marine ecoregions have less than 1% MPA coverage across the shelf, but this is highly variable, and (8%) of ecoregions have >30% protection. Protection is greatest in the tropical realms, while temperate realms remain poorly represented. Given that that many sites lack effective management, even these low estimates of coverage are an optimistic measure of the extent of effective marine conservation.

Understanding the feeding ecology of the broadnose sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus) in Patagonia, Argentina

Los sistemas marinos y costeros del área marina protegida (AMP) Uramba, así como en el resto del mundo, proporcionan una gran variedad de servicios ecosistémicos (i. e. protección costera, regulación de ciclos geoquímicos o provisión de alimento, etc.). Amenazas naturales y/o antropogénicas (i. e. como la erosión costera, el aumento relativo en el nivel del mar o la sobrepesca) pueden transformar, degradar o limitar el suministro de estos servicios ecosistémicos. Este estudio explora el grado de vulnerabilidad que presentan los servicios ecosistémicos del AMP Uramba ante las amenazas naturales y antropogénicas presentes. Los métodos incluyen una revisión bibliográfica, un taller de expertos, trabajo de campo para la validación y la georreferenciación de servicios y amenazas. Para calcular la vulnerabilidad de los servicios ecosistémicos, se estimó la magnitud de las amenazas, su riesgo y su capacidad de resiliencia. Las amenazas naturales y antropogénicas más frecuentes se encuentran en la región externa del AMP Uramba, en las localidades de Juanchaco, Ladrilleros y Base Naval. El aumento en el nivel del mar es la amenaza que más podría vulnerar los servicios ecosistémicos del AMP Uramba, incluyendo los siguientes: protección costera en playas arenosas, planos lodosos y manglares; regulación climática en playas arenosas y planos lodosos; recreación y turismo en playas arenosas y manglares; mantenimiento de ciclos de vida en manglares, y provisión de alimentos en planos lodosos. Los servicios ecosistémicos de la costa rocosa están amenazados principalmente por deslizamientos, y en el ecosistema pelágico por la sobrepesca.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are recognized as highly effective tools for marine conservation. They may also play an important role in mitigating climate change. A variety of climate change solutions are rooted in the ocean, centered primarily around “blue carbon” and the capacity of marine life to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) with some potential to reduce emissions. However, the global potential of these solutions remains misunderstood and untapped. Here, we analyze the potential impact on carbon removal and emissions reduction of adopting six ocean-based solutions in MPAs: coastal wetlands protection, coastal wetlands restoration, macroalgae protection, macroalgae restoration, seafloor protection, and seaweed farming. The carbon removal and avoided emissions achieved by implementing these solutions globally through 2060 were estimated using meta-analysis of existing studies. Applying all six ocean solutions under global implementation scenarios yields total emissions reduction by 2060 of 16.2 ± 1.82 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2-eq) for the plausible scenario and 24.8 ± 2.46 GtCO2-eq for the ambitious scenario. That equates to around 2% of the total carbon mitigation needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to 2 °C by 2050. Around 70% of this reduction is attributable to carbon removal and 30% to avoided emissions. Enhancing MPAs’ blue carbon potential could be a key contributor to drawing down carbon and could provide many additional benefits to the marine environment and human society, such as rebuilding biodiversity and sustaining food production. However, more regional-scale studies are needed to inform the best strategies for preserving and enhancing carbon removal in ocean sinks.

Mangrove ecosystems play a crucial role in blue carbon sequestration, coastal flood protection, and biodiversity conservation, while also serving as nursery habitats for threatened and economically important species. Due to their complex root structures, mangroves act as natural plastic traps, making them vulnerable to marine plastic contamination. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis synthesising available global data on macroplastic and microplastic pollution in mangrove ecosystems, assessing their prevalence and the environmental partitioning of plastics both within and outside Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). We reviewed 44 primary studies and conducted statistical analyses to compare plastic abundance in the sediment, water, and biota. Our results show that mangrove ecosystems experience significant plastic pollution. Macroplastic abundance within the studied mangroves varied by five orders of magnitude, averaging 23.73±8.80 items m-2, comparable to the highest levels recorded on beaches and underscoring the plastic-trapping capacity of mangroves. Mangroves globally had a mean contamination of 1122.98±150.17 microplastics kg-1 in sediment and 16.00±11.04 microplastics L-1 in seawater, both approximately double estimated safe limits. Our analyses found a 45.5% reduction in microplastic within mangrove sediments and an 83.3% reduction in macroplastic contamination in protected mangrove ecosystems. However, seawater microplastic levels were higher within MPAs, particularly near urbanized areas. These findings emphasize the need for integrated mitigation strategies that combine MPAs with targeted plastic waste reduction measures. Our analyses also highlight that the ecological impacts of this plastic accumulation within mangrove ecosystems remains a key knowledge gap.