Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FISHSCALE (Disentangling Cross-Scale Drivers of Coral Reef Fish Community Structure for Ecosystem-Based Management)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-03-01 al 2023-02-28
Using long-term coral reef monitoring data across 35 central western Pacific islands, the research used Bayesian methods to model ecological patterns relating to biophysical forcing across scales. It quantified how the presence of local human impacts disrupt those biophysical relationships. The research revealed how a classic theory of ecological depth zonation — recognized more than six decades ago as a fundamental structuring force of coral reef communities – is limited for predicting ecological dynamics where human impacts are present on contemporary reefs. The Action identifies contemporary ecological baselines on reefs, defined from remote reefs considered to be among the most intact and near-pristine remaining and least exposed to local human impacts. Climate change and local human impacts are worsening and increasing ecological uncertainty. This uncertainty limits our capacity to make effective ecological predictions from which to base decisions of risk-control management, conservation, policy, and governance. To better deal with this uncertainty, we can measure change from revised contemporary baselines as now more pragmatic points of reference. So, the research explored the ecological impacts of contemporary marine heatwave conditions at one of the last remaining ‘pristine’ coral reef systems on earth. It examines the effects of extreme heat stress on reef fish assemblages at a historically highly productive island in the Pacific Ocean to quantify the ecological effects of climate change in the absence of confounding local human impacts.
The broad objectives: 1) Collate a trait database for reef-fishes observed in NOAA’s long-term coral reef monitoring program across the Pacific; 2) Understand how cross-scale biophysical processes determine the distribution of reef-fish assemblages (across reefs, islands and ecoregions); 3) Determine how local human populations disrupt natural patterns governing the ecological organisation of reef fishes; 4) Identify ‘contemporary ecological baselines’ from remote reefs without local human impacts but exposed to climate change.
This MSCA developed the Fellow’s skills across research methods, expanding her interdisciplinary knowledge and network, to promote best practice in ecological enquiry for contemporary ecosystem-based management (e.g. working group in NOAA on trait-based approaches for monitoring; delivering R workshops on trait-based methods in ecology; open-access publishing of results, data, and code). The project outcomes generate knowledge and improved understanding towards the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, in particular due to collaboration with US agency, NOAA which informs the Ecosystem-Based Management Fishery Ecosystem Plans implemented by the Western Pacific Fisheries Management Council, for each of the four geopolitical regions under the project study.