Convergence of stakeholders' environmental threat perceptions following mass coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Managing human use of ecosystems in an era of rapid environmental change requires an understanding of diverse stakeholders' behaviors and perceptions to enable effective prioritization of actions to mitigate multiple threats. Specifically, research examining how threat perceptions are shared or diverge among stakeholder groups and how these can evolve through time is increasingly important. We investigated environmental threat perceptions related to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and explored their associations before and after consecutive years of mass coral bleaching. We used data from surveys of commercial fishers, tourism operators, and coastal residents (n = 5254) conducted in 2013 and 2017. Threats perceived as most serious differed substantially among groups before bleaching but were strongly aligned after bleaching. Climate change became the most frequently reported threat by all stakeholder groups following the coral bleaching events, and perceptions of fishing and poor water quality as threats also ranked high. Within each of the 3 stakeholder groups, fishers, tourism operators, and coastal residents, the prioritization of these 3 threats tended to diverge in 2013, but convergence occurred after bleaching. These results indicate an emergence of areas of agreement both within and across stakeholder groups. Changes in perceptions were likely influenced by high-profile environmental-disturbance events and media representations of threats. Our results provide insights into the plasticity of environmental-threat perceptions and highlight how their convergence in response to major events may create new opportunities for strategic public engagement and increasing support for management.

Convergencia de la Percepción de las Amenazas Ambientales por los Actores Sociales después del Blanqueamiento Masivo del Coral de la Gran Barrera Arrecifal Resumen La administración del uso que las personas dan a los ecosistemas en una época de cambios ambientales rápidos requiere un entendimiento del comportamiento de diferentes actores sociales y sus percepciones para facilitar la priorización de las acciones que mitigan a las múltiples amenazas. Específicamente, las investigaciones que examinan cómo se comparten o difieren las percepciones de las amenazas entre los grupos de actores y cómo estas percepciones pueden evolucionar con el tiempo son cada vez más importantes. Investigamos las percepciones de las amenazas ambientales relacionadas con la Gran Barrera Arrecifal en Australia y exploramos sus asociaciones antes y después de varios años consecutivos de blanqueamiento masivo del coral. Usamos datos tomados de encuestas realizadas a pescadores comerciales, operadores turísticos y residentes de la costa (n = 5,254) en 2013 y 2017. Las amenazas percibidas como las más serias difirieron sustancialmente entre los tres grupos antes del blanqueamiento, pero se alinearon marcadamente después del blanqueamiento. El cambio climático se convirtió en la amenaza reportada con mayor frecuencia por todos los grupos de actores después de los eventos de blanqueamiento del coral. Las percepciones de la pesca y la baja calidad del agua como amenazas también tuvieron una clasificación alta. Dentro de cada uno de los tres grupos de actores (pescadores, operadores turísticos y residentes de la costa) la priorización de estas tres amenazas tendió a diferir en 2013 pero la convergencia ocurrió después del blanqueamiento. Estos resultados indican un surgimiento de áreas de acuerdo dentro y entre los grupos de actores. Los cambios en las percepciones probablemente estuvieron influenciados por eventos de perturbación ambiental de alto perfil y la representación mediática de las amenazas. Nuestros resultados proporcionaron conocimiento sobre la plasticidad de las percepciones de las amenazas ambientales y resalta cómo su convergencia en la respuesta a los eventos más importantes puede crear nuevas oportunidades para la participación estratégica del público e incrementar el apoyo para su manejo.

Beauty and the reef: Evaluating the use of non-expert ratings for monitoring aesthetic values of coral reefs.

Aesthetic values are a key driver of tourist and recreational visitation to natural areas and are listed among the selection criteria for World Heritage properties. However, assessment and monitoring of aesthetic values in natural areas, and coral reefs in particular, have proven to be challenging. In our study we explored the value and limitations of a rapid assessment approach involving non-expert ratings of aesthetic beauty as a potential tool for long-term monitoring of aesthetic values in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia. We investigated the sensitivity of a rating scale for detecting change and sampling requirements for monitoring, as well as observer biases, using an online survey of 1417 Australians in which respondents rated the aesthetic beauty of 181 coral reef images on a ten-point scale. Our results show average aesthetic rating scores ranged from 4.35 to 8.34 on a scale from 1 (ugly) to 10 (beautiful), with potential to detect differences of statistical significance within one point, indicating sufficient sensitivity to change for monitoring purposes. We found that a sample size of c.100 ratings per image provided a reasonable balance between cost (i.e. sample size) and accuracy (i.e. error). Older respondents (>65 years) with higher levels of coral reef visitation, experience and interest were more likely to give extreme ratings, however, there was no apparent predictor for this bias to be positive or negative (high or low ratings). Based on these results we provide recommendations to assist coral reef managers in their use and interpretation of non-expert aesthetic ratings in coral reef monitoring.

Predicting poaching risk in marine protected areas for improved patrol efficiency.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are effective resource management and conservation measures, but their success is often hindered by non-compliant activities such as poaching. Understanding the risk factors and spatial patterns of poaching is therefore crucial for efficient law enforcement. Here, we conducted explanatory and predictive modelling of poaching from recreational fishers within no-take zones of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) using Boosted Regression Trees (BRT). Combining patrol effort data, observed distribution of reported incidents, and spatially-explicit environmental and human risk factors, we modeled the occurrence probability of poaching incidents and mapped poaching risk at fine-scale. Our results: (i) show that fishing attractiveness, accessibility and fishing capacity play a major role in shaping the spatial patterns of poaching; (ii) revealed key interactions among these factors as well as tipping points beyond which poaching risk increased or decreased markedly; and (iii) highlight gaps in patrol effort that could be filled for improved resource allocation. The approach developed through this study provide a novel way to quantify the relative influence of multiple interacting factors in shaping poaching risk, and hold promises for replication across a broad range of marine or terrestrial settings.

Combined effects of climate change and sea-level rise project dramatic habitat loss of the globally endangered Bengal tiger in the Bangladesh Sundarbans.

The Sundarbans, in southern coastal Bangladesh, is the world's largest surviving mangrove habitat and the last stronghold of tiger adapted to living in a mangrove ecosystem. Using MaxEnt (maximum entropy modeling), current distribution data, land-use/land cover and bioclimatic variables, we modeled the likely future distribution of the globally endangered Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. We used two climatic scenarios (i.e., RCP6.0 and RCP8.5) developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide projections of suitable habitats of Bengal tigers in 2050 and 2070. We also combined projected sea-level rise for the area in our models of future species distributions. Our results suggest that there will be a dramatic decline in suitable Bengal tiger habitats in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. Other than various aspects of local climate, sea-level rise is projected to have a substantial negative impact on Bengal tiger habitats in this low-lying area. Our model predicts that due to the combined effect of climate change and sea-level rise, there will be no suitable Bengal tiger habitat remaining in the Sundarbans by 2070. Enhancing terrestrial protected area coverage, regular monitoring, law enforcement, awareness-building among local residents among the key strategies needed to ensure long-term survival and conservation of the Bengal tiger in the Bangladesh Sundarbans.

Degraded tropical rain forests possess valuable carbon storage opportunities in a complex, forested landscape.

Tropical forests are major contributors to the terrestrial global carbon pool, but this pool is being reduced via deforestation and forest degradation. Relatively few studies have assessed carbon storage in degraded tropical forests. We sampled 37,000 m(2) of intact rainforest, degraded rainforest and sclerophyll forest across the greater Wet Tropics bioregion of northeast Australia. We compared aboveground biomass and carbon storage of the three forest types, and the effects of forest structural attributes and environmental factors that influence carbon storage. Some degraded forests were found to store much less aboveground carbon than intact rainforests, whereas others sites had similar carbon storage to primary forest. Sclerophyll forests had lower carbon storage, comparable to the most heavily degraded rainforests. Our findings indicate that under certain situations, degraded forest may store as much carbon as intact rainforests. Strategic rehabilitation of degraded forests could enhance regional carbon storage and have positive benefits for tropical biodiversity.

Ecosystem services capacity across heterogeneous forest types: understanding the interactions and suggesting pathways for sustaining multiple ecosystem services.

As ecosystem services supply from tropical forests is declining due to deforestation and forest degradation, much effort is essential to sustain ecosystem services supply from tropical forested landscapes, because tropical forests provide the largest flow of multiple ecosystem services among the terrestrial ecosystems. In order to sustain multiple ecosystem services, understanding ecosystem services capacity across heterogeneous forest types and identifying certain ecosystem services that could be managed to leverage positive effects across the wider bundle of ecosystem services are required. We sampled three forest types, tropical rainforests, sclerophyll forests, and rehabilitated plantation forests, over an area of 32,000m(2) from Wet Tropics bioregion, Australia, aiming to compare supply and evaluate interactions and patterns of eight ecosystem services (global climate regulation, air quality regulation, erosion regulation, nutrient regulation, cyclone protection, habitat provision, energy provision, and timber provision). On average, multiple ecosystem services were highest in the rainforests, lowest in sclerophyll forests, and intermediate in rehabilitated plantation forests. However, a wide variation was apparent among the plots across the three forest types. Global climate regulation service had a synergistic impact on the supply of multiple ecosystem services, while nutrient regulation service was found to have a trade-off impact. Considering multiple ecosystem services, most of the rehabilitated plantation forest plots shared the same ordination space with rainforest plots in the ordination analysis, indicating that rehabilitated plantation forests may supply certain ecosystem services nearly equivalent to rainforests. Two synergy groups and one trade-off group were identified. Apart from conserving rainforests and sclerophyll forests, our findings suggest two additional integrated pathways to sustain the supply of multiple ecosystem services from a heterogeneous tropical forest landscape: (i) rehabilitation of degraded forests aiming to provide global climate regulation and habitat provision ecosystem services and (ii) management intervention to sustain global climate regulation and habitat provision ecosystem services.

An online spatial database of Australian Indigenous Biocultural Knowledge for contemporary natural and cultural resource management.

With growing international calls for the enhanced involvement of Indigenous peoples and their biocultural knowledge in managing conservation and the sustainable use of physical environment, it is timely to review the available literature and develop cross-cultural approaches to the management of biocultural resources. Online spatial databases are becoming common tools for educating land managers about Indigenous Biocultural Knowledge (IBK), specifically to raise a broad awareness of issues, identify knowledge gaps and opportunities, and to promote collaboration. Here we describe a novel approach to the application of internet and spatial analysis tools that provide an overview of publically available documented Australian IBK (AIBK) and outline the processes used to develop the online resource. By funding an AIBK working group, the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS) provided a unique opportunity to bring together cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary and trans-organizational contributors who developed these resources. Without such an intentionally collaborative process, this unique tool would not have been developed. The tool developed through this process is derived from a spatial and temporal literature review, case studies and a compilation of methods, as well as other relevant AIBK papers. The online resource illustrates the depth and breadth of documented IBK and identifies opportunities for further work, partnerships and investment for the benefit of not only Indigenous Australians, but all Australians. The database currently includes links to over 1500 publically available IBK documents, of which 568 are geo-referenced and were mapped. It is anticipated that as awareness of the online resource grows, more documents will be provided through the website to build the database. It is envisaged that this will become a well-used tool, integral to future natural and cultural resource management and maintenance.