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Abstract
Structural complexity is an important feature to understand reef resilience abilities, through its role in mediating predator-prey interactions, regulating competition, and promoting recruitment. Most of the current methods used to measure reef structural complexity fail to quantify the contributions of fine and coarse scales of rugosity simultaneously, while other methods require heavy data computation. In this study, we propose estimating reef structural complexity based on high-resolution depth profiles to quantify the contributions of both fine and coarse rugosities. We adapted the root mean square of the deviation from the assessed surface profile (Rq) with polynomials. The efficiency of the proposed method was tested on nine theoretical cases and 50 in situ transects from South Taiwan, and compared to both the chain method and the visual rugosity index commonly employed to characterize reef structural complexity. The Rq indices proposed as rugosity estimators in this study consider multiple levels of reef rugosity, which the chain method and the visual rugosity index fail to apprehend. Furthermore, relationships were found between Rq scores and specific functional groups in the benthic community. Indeed, the fine scale rugosity of the South Taiwan reefs mainly comes from biotic components such as hard corals, while their coarse scale rugosity is essentially provided by the topographic variations that reflect the geological context of the reefs. This approach allows identifying the component of the rugosity that could be managed and which could, ultimately, improve strategies designed for conservation.
Highlights
Climate Change and Its Impacts on Reef Structural ComplexityClimate change and anthropogenic pressures transform ecosystems and jeopardize the services they provide, especially in coral reefs (Vergés et al, 2014; Hughes et al, 2017; Pecl et al, 2017)
Theoretical Cases Rq1 was lowest for Theo1 (0.16), which is consistent with the characteristic established for our theoretical transects, as Theo1 had the lowest coarse and fine scale rugosity levels, and the lowest overall rugosity (Figure 1 and Table 2)
Theo9 had the highest Rq1 score (0.62), which is consistent with the theoretical transects characteristics, as this transect represents the highest level of coarse and fine scale rugosity and is expected to represent the highest overall rugosity among our theoretical transects (Figure 1 and Table 2)
Summary
Climate change and anthropogenic pressures transform ecosystems and jeopardize the services they provide, especially in coral reefs (Vergés et al, 2014; Hughes et al, 2017; Pecl et al, 2017). Reefs must show increasing capacities to resist and recover from stressors in order to persist (Hughes et al, 2003, 2010, 2011). In this context, structural complexity has been identified as a critical factor to understand reef resilience abilities (Graham et al, 2015; Maynard et al, 2017). Mechanical damages and reduced growth rates of corals have led to a consequential loss in reef structural complexity over the past decades (Young et al, 2012; Bozec et al, 2015; Hoegh-Guldberg et al, 2017; Mollica et al, 2018)
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