Assessing Conservation Prioritisations
CCC co-author new paper that evaluates the impact of accounting for coral cover during marine conservation prioritisations
The new paper, "Evaluating the Impact of Accounting for Coral Cover in Large-Scale Marine Conservation Prioritisations", published in Diversity and Distributions in 2019, tackles issues surrounding the declining diversity and physical structure of coral reefs and the loss of ecosystem services. The paper addresses the generalised broad assumption, often made when establishing Marine Protected Areas (MPA), that coral reefs are of comparable condition. Utilising macro-ecological data from a range of sources throughout the Coral Triangle to develop spatially explicit predictive models of hard coral cover, the team were able to demonstrate that including habitat condition into large marine spatial prioritisation is feasible. The paper further calls for increased implementation and evaluation of such ecologically relevant planning approaches to enhance potential conservation effectiveness.
The paper was developed and presented by Dr Ans Vercammen, Centre for Environmental Policy (Imperial College London), with contributions from 10 other authors, including CCC's Head of Science, Tom Dallison.
Conservation managers, governments and NGOs are often faced with the tough decision on where to allocate scarce resources when aiming to conserve coral reefs, their associated systems and ecosystem services. One key, and commonly used management action is the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPA) to conserve and safeguard the benefits of biodiversity where a balance between ecological, social, and economic needs is sought. However, prioritising areas in spatial conservation planning remains a challenge as area-based targets are often set by policy or stakeholder census due to a lack of resources (time, cost etc.) to proactively conduct ecological analyses to guide establishment.
When aiming to conserve the services of coral reefs and safeguard biodiversity, it is critical that managers not only supply the presence of coral as a criterion for assessment, but also the condition of such systems. This is to ensure that established MPAs, that require resources, are not established in areas with low conservation-value or poor community health where low productivity will out-weigh the MPAs ability to persist. Well-designed MPAs should target the conservation of fish biomass and coral cover to promote adequacy as well as linking these to ecological connectivity requirements. However, spatially-explicit data and/or information on the condition of coral reefs show paucity. As a result, this paucity causes the utilisation of surrogate information (reef extent or bioregionalisations) to make designs on where to allocate resources.
To address this, the paper assesses the consequence of assuming that all reefs hold equivalent conservation value, irrespective of the actual level of cover or condition throughout regions. The assessment was applied to large-scale planning outcomes and examined the relative impact of alternative approaches to incorporating reef condition in the planning process of establishing management actions. Data were utilised from over 6,400 macro-ecological surveys undertaken throughout the Coral Triangle, providing spatial predictions of hard coral cover. Utilising hard coral cover enabled the comparison between expected and realised coral reef cover (when ignoring condition). Moreover, demonstrating the feasibility and potential utility of incorporating reef condition within management plans.
Analysis indicated that the mean live hard coral cover, throughout the Coral Triangle, was 33.9% with significant regional variation observed. The model developed was able to account for 24.2% of the variance in live hard coral cover which was significantly associated will biophysical predictors included in the model: Dissolved Oxygen; SST (range); SST (max); pH; PAR; Diffuse Attenuation; Calcite; Eco-region; and Data Source.
Interestingly, analysis further demonstrated that predicted coral cover showed that the actual amount of coral cover represented may be overestimated by as much as 64% for the entire Coral Triangle in the resulting MPA system, in the Representation Only
scenario. This therefore, highlights that, at large spatial scales, prioritisation are constrained by paucity in habitat condition data resulting in the assumption that all reefs hold equal value. However, it is further highlgihted in the paper that, although incorporating habitat condition into planning wil improve conservation outputs, the approach presented can also improve; updated spatial layers, more precise habitat classivations and connectity data such as larval dispersal.
Ultimately, including the condition of conservation features in
planning can only aim to achieve
a better representation of conservation “value,” which is but the first step in securing improved
conservation outcomes. To translate planning into useful action,
important additional considerations are required, for example, by
assigning “priority” based on an assessment of vulnerability and irreplaceability and examining “conservation opportunity,” considering the effectiveness
and implementation costs of specific actions to achieve conservation aims.
In summary, reef‐building corals are foundational species that create
critical three‐dimensional reef structure and support the biodiversity
and productivity of reefs. Not accounting for reef condition in marine conservation planning processes will therefore ultimately constrain the ability to deliver an adequate MPA system that supports the persistence of
biodiversity. Therefore, the paper demonstrates that incorporating this information
into management decisions for tropical marine habitats is feasible on alarge spatial scale, providing significant opportunities for improving
conservation outcomes.
This paper summary is adopted from the full paper which can be downloaded from Diversity and Distributions here
