Great Barrier Reef No-Take Areas Include a Range of Disturbance Regimes

Jeffrey A Maynard (1, 2, 3) , Roger Beeden (4, 5) , Marjetta Puotinen (6) , Johanna E. Johnson (5, 7) , Paul Marshall (8, 9) , Ruben van Hooidonk (10, 11) , Michelle Devlin (7) , Eric Lawrey (6) , Jen Dryden (4) , Natalie Ban (12) , David Wachenfeld (4) , Serge Planes (1, 2)

1 CRIOBE - Centre de recherches insulaires et observatoire de l'environnement
2 LabEX CORAIL - Laboratoire d'Excellence CORAIL
3 Marine Applied Research Center
4 GBRMPA - Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
5 College of Marine and Environmental Sciences [Cairns]
6 AIMS - Australian Institute of Marine Science
7 C2O Consulting
8 Reef Ecologic
9 Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Research
10 AOML - NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
11 CIMAS - Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies
12 School of Environmental Studies

Exposure to disturbance is rarely considered in marine protected area planning. Typically, representing and replicating the habitat types present within protected areas is used to spread the risk of protecting frequently disturbed sites. This was the approach used during the 2004 re-zoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) via the Representative Areas Program. Over 10 years later, we examine whether the risk was spread by mapping exposure of coral reefs in the GBRMP to four disturbances that cause coral mortality: bleaching, tropical cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, and freshwater inundation. Our objectives were to: (1) assess whether no-take areas include a range of disturbance regimes, and (2) identify coral reef areas with lower relative exposure. At least 13% and an average of 31% of reef locations in each of 11 exposure classes are included within no-take areas. A greater proportion of low-exposure areas are within no-take areas than high-exposure areas (34.2% vs. 28.3%). The results demonstrate the value of risk spreading when exposure data are not available while also showing that regularly assessing exposure increases capacity for adaptive, resilience-based reef management.

Keywords: Coral reefs; climate change; exposure; management; marine protected areas; spatial planning; vulnerability

Domains: Biodiversity and Ecology

Jeffrey A Maynard, Roger Beeden, Marjetta Puotinen, Johanna E. Johnson, Paul Marshall, et al.. Great Barrier Reef No-Take Areas Include a Range of Disturbance Regimes. Conservation Letters, 2015, ⟨10.1111/conl.12198⟩. ⟨hal-01225201⟩