Abstract
Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and management requires identification of the environmental and socioeconomic factors driving the persistence of scleractinian coral assemblages—the foundation species of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we compiled coral abundance data from 2,584 Indo-Pacific reefs to evaluate the influence of 21 climate, social and environmental drivers on the ecology of reef coral assemblages. Higher abundances of framework-building corals were typically associated with: weaker thermal disturbances and longer intervals for potential recovery; slower human population growth; reduced access by human settlements and markets; and less nearby agriculture. We therefore propose a framework of three management strategies (protect, recover or transform) by considering: (1) if reefs were above or below a proposed threshold of >10% cover of the coral taxa important for structural complexity and carbonate production; and (2) reef exposure to severe thermal stress during the 2014–2017 global coral bleaching event. Our findings can guide urgent management efforts for coral reefs, by identifying key threats across multiple scales and strategic policy priorities that might sustain a network of functioning reefs in the Indo-Pacific to avoid ecosystem collapse.
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Data availability
Data are available on request or directly from the data contributors. Contact details and information on the geographies covered by each data contributor are provided in Supplementary Table 8.
Code availability
All R code is available from https://github.com/esdarling/IndoPacific-corals.
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Acknowledgements
All data contributors thank their monitoring partners and funders (see Supplementary Acknowledgements). We thank A. Baird, E. Buthung, P. Chabanet, Y. Chancerelle, D. Harvell, A. Heyward, P. Jokiel, R. Komeno, R. Lawton, S. Maxin, M. Pratchett, B. Randriamanantsoa, C. Rodney, E. Rudi, C. Russo, S. Tasidjawa, B. Vargas-Angel, I. Williams, B. Willis and J. Zavatra for data collection. We thank S. Anderson, K. Fisher and H. Beyer for assistance with analysis and data extraction. Major funding for this work was provided via a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship from the Cedar Tree Foundation, a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through grants to the Wildlife Conservation Society. The scientific results and conclusions, as well as any views or opinions expressed herein, are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Department of Commerce.
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E.S.D. envisioned and led the project, performed all of the analyses, secured funding and wrote the manuscript. T.R.M., J.M., G.G.G., N.A.J.G., F.J.-H., J.E.C., C.M., C.C.H., M.-J.F., M. Krkosek and D.M. contributed to the conceptual ideas, design, analysis, design and writing. All other authors contributed data, and edited and approved the manuscript.
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Darling, E.S., McClanahan, T.R., Maina, J. et al. Social–environmental drivers inform strategic management of coral reefs in the Anthropocene. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 1341–1350 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0953-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0953-8
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