Assessing relative resilience potential of coral reefs to inform management

Jeffrey A Maynard (1, 2, 3) , Steven Mckagan (4) , Laurie Raymundo (5) , Steven Johnson (6) , Gabby N. Ahmadia (7) , Lyza Johnston (8) , Peter Houk (5) , Gareth J. Williams (9) , Matt Kendall (10) , Scott F. Heron (11, 12, 13) , Ruben van Hooidonk (14, 15) , Elizabeth Mcleod (16) , Dieter Tracey (17) , Serge Planes (1, 2)

1 CRIOBE - Centre de recherches insulaires et observatoire de l'environnement
2 LabEX CORAIL - Laboratoire d'Excellence CORAIL
3 SymbioSeas
4 SEFC - Southeast Fisheries Science Center
5 Marine Laboratory
6 Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality
7 WWF
8 Macaulay Institute
9 School of Ocean Sciences
10 NCCOS - National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
11 Marine Geophysical Laboratory
12 STAR - NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research
13 Coral Reef Watch
14 AOML - NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
15 CIMAS - Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies
16 The Nature Conservancy
17 Inconnu

Ecological resilience assessments are an important part of resilience-based management (RBM) and can help prioritize and target management actions. Use of such assessments has been limited due to a lack of clear guidance on the assessment process. This study builds on the latest scientific advances in RBM to provide that guidance from a resilience assessment undertaken in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). We assessed spatial variation in ecological resilience potential at 78 forereef sites near the populated islands of the CNMI: Saipan, Tinian/Aguijan, and Rota. The assessments are based on measuring indicators of resilience processes and are combined with information on anthropogenic stress and larval connectivity. We find great spatial variation in relative resilience potential with many high resilience sites near Saipan (5 of 7) and low resilience sites near Rota (7 of 9). Criteria were developed to identify priority sites for six types of management actions (e.g., conservation, land-based sources of pollution reduction, and fishery management and enforcement) and 51 of the 78 sites met at least one of the sets of criteria. The connectivity simulations developed indicate that Tinian and Aguijan are each roughly 10 × the larvae source that Rota is and twice as frequent a destination. These results may explain the lower relative resilience potential of Rota reefs and indicates that actions in Saipan and Tinian/Aguijan will be important to maintaining supply of larvae. The process we describe for undertaking resilience assessments can be tailored for use in coral reef areas globally and applied to other ecosystems.

Domains: Environmental Sciences; Biodiversity and Ecology

Jeffrey A Maynard, Steven Mckagan, Laurie Raymundo, Steven Johnson, Gabby N. Ahmadia, et al.. Assessing relative resilience potential of coral reefs to inform management. Biological Conservation, 2015, 192, p. 109-119. ⟨10.1016/j.biocon.2015.09.001⟩. ⟨hal-01224905⟩