Future too warm for baby sharks
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au
Abstract: The continuing and rapid global decline of coral reefs calls for new approaches to sustain reefs and the millions of people who depend on them. In this talk, I present a ‘work in progress’ aimed at rethinking reef conservation along two lines. First is directly confronting the drivers of change. In addition to environmental factors, there are socioeconomic drivers that influence the condition of coral reef ecosystems, though reef governance rarely focus on explicitly managing these. My colleagues and I analysed data from >2500 reef sites worldwide to quantify how key socioeconomic and environmental drivers are related to reef fish biomass, a key indicator of ecosystem condition and resource availability. Our global analysis reveals that the strongest driver of reef fish biomass is our metric of potential interactions with urban centres (market gravity), with important, but smaller, roles of local management, human demographics, socioeconomic development, and environmental conditions. These results highlight multiple underutilized policy levers that could help to sustain coral reefs, such as dampening the negative impact of markets. Second, drawing on theory and practice in human health and rural development, we use a positive deviance (bright spots) analysis to systematically identify coral reefs that have substantially higher biomass than expected, given their socioeconomic and environmental conditions. These ‘bright spots’ may provide an untapped opportunity to learn how societies have maintained coral reef resources in the face of strong drivers of change. Uncovering the mechanisms that underpin the ability of bright spots to confront high pressures may form a basis for novel policy approaches.
Bio: Professor Josh Cinner’s research explores how social, economic, and cultural factors influence the ways in which people use, perceive, and govern natural resources, with a particular emphasis on using applied social science to inform coral reef management. His background is in human geography and he often works closely with ecologists to uncover complex linkages between social and ecological systems. He has worked on human dimensions of resource management in Jamaica, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Mauritius, Seychelles, Indonesia, Mozambique, and the USA. Josh holds an ARC Australian Research Fellowship and is a recipient of the 2015 Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation.
New research has found as climate change causes the world’s oceans to warm, baby sharks are born smaller, exhausted, undernourished and into environments that are already difficult for them to survi
A new study shows the coastal protection coral reefs currently provide will start eroding by the end of the century, as the world continues to warm and the oceans acidify. A team of researchers led
A team of scientists led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) won one of the nation’s top science awards at tonight’s ‘Oscars of Australian science’, the Eureka P
An analytical tool will be used to assess the climate risks facing historic World Heritage sites in Africa—the ruins of two great 13th century ports and the remains of a palace and iron-making indus
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Abstract: Increased uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has caused the world’s ocean to become more acidic. Different marine habitats are known to have varying ranges of CO2 across mul
Abstract: The Allen Coral Atlas (http://allencoralatlas.org) partnership uses high-resolution satellite imagery, machine learning, and field data to map and monitor the world’s coral reefs at unp
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Abstract: Invasive species management can be the the subject of debate in many countries due to conflicting ecological, ethical, economic, and social reasons, especially when dealing with a species s
Abstract: Ocean acidification, the increase in seawater CO2 with all its associated consequences, is relatively well understood in open oceans. In shelf seas such as the Great Barrier Reef, processe
Abstract: The backdrop of legends and movies, the deep sea has always been unfathomable because we had no idea what existed there. Once thought to be barren of life, we now know this couldn’t be
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University Townsville
Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: 61 7 4781 4000
Email: info@coralcoe.org.au