Abstract
Management authorities seldom have the capacity to comprehensively address the full suite of anthropogenic stressors, particularly in the coastal zone where numerous threats can act simultaneously to impact reefs and other ecosystems. This situation requires tools to prioritise management interventions that result in optimum ecological outcomes under a set of constraints. Here we develop one such tool, introducing a Bayesian Belief Network to model the ecological condition of inshore coral reefs in Moreton Bay (Australia) under a range of management actions. Empirical field data was used to model a suite of possible ecological responses of coral reef assemblages to five key management actions both in the sea (e.g. expansion of reserves, mangrove & seagrass restoration, fishing restrictions) and on land (e.g. lower inputs of sediment and sewage from treatment plants). Models show that expanding marine reserves (a ‘marine action’) and reducing sediment inputs from the catchments (a ‘land action’) were the most effective investments to achieve a better status of reefs in the Bay, with both having been included in >58% of scenarios with positive outcomes, and >98% of the most effective (5th percentile) scenarios. Heightened fishing restrictions, restoring habitats, and reducing nutrient discharges from wastewater treatment plants have additional, albeit smaller effects. There was no evidence that combining individual management actions would consistently produce sizeable synergistic until after maximum investment on both marine reserves (i.e. increasing reserve extent from 31 to 62% of reefs) and sediments (i.e. rehabilitating 6350 km of waterways within catchments to reduce sediment loads by 50%) were implemented. The method presented here provides a useful tool to prioritize environmental actions in situations where multiple competing management interventions exist for coral reefs and in other systems subjected to multiple stressor from the land and the sea.
Highlights
In coastal marine environments, urbanisation, habitat loss, fishing, sediments, and pollutant inputs degrade ecosystem condition [1, 2]
Inshore reefs situated within coastal embayments or estuaries are subjected to several threats from the adjacent land and catchments. These are excellent model systems for testing how different management actions on land and in the nearshore zone will benefit inshore marine systems because: 1) the response of reefs to stressors is generally well understood, 2) management actions to mitigate the effects of stressors are widely implemented, and 3) effects might vary between ecosystems, key threats and their ecological effects are broadly comparable to those affecting other nearshore ecosystems, imparting generality within a broader environmental management context [2, 11]
Using empirical data collected from field studies of inshore coral reefs in Moreton Bay, Australia, we developed an approach for prioritising management interventions, which identified opportunities where multiple interventions may have synergistic effects on the ecological condition of coral reefs
Summary
Urbanisation, habitat loss, fishing, sediments, and pollutant inputs (e.g. wastewater) degrade ecosystem condition [1, 2]. Inshore reefs situated within coastal embayments or estuaries are subjected to several threats from the adjacent land and catchments These are excellent model systems for testing how different management actions on land and in the nearshore zone will benefit inshore marine systems because: 1) the response of reefs to stressors (especially sediments, nutrients and fishing) is generally well understood, 2) management actions to mitigate the effects of stressors are widely implemented (e.g. fishing restrictions, wastewater treatment), and 3) effects might vary between ecosystems, key threats and their ecological effects are broadly comparable to those affecting other nearshore ecosystems (e.g. oyster reefs, kelp forests, seagrass beds), imparting generality within a broader environmental management context [2, 11]
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