The 'Great Southern Reef': social, ecological and economic value of Australia's neglected kelp forests

By S. Bennett, T. Wernberg, S. Connell, A. Hobday, Craig R. Johnson, E. Poloczanska. 2016

356 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Kelp forests define >8000km of temperate coastline across southern Australia, where ~70% of Australians live, work and recreate. Despite this, public and political awareness of the scale and significance of this marine ecosystem is low, and research investment miniscule (<10%), relative to comparable ecosystems. The absence of an identity for Australia’s temperate reefs as an entity has probably contributed to the current lack of appreciation of this system, which is at odds with its profound ecological, social and economic importance. We define the ‘Great Southern Reef’ (GSR) as Australia’s spatially connected temperate reef system. The GSR covers ~71000km2 and represents a global biodiversity hotspot across at least nine phyla. GSR-related fishing and tourism generates at least AU$10 billion year–1, and in this context the GSR is a significant natural asset for Australia and globally. Maintaining the health and ecological functioning of the GSR is critical to the continued sustainability of human livelihoods and wellbeing derived from it. By recognising the GSR as an entity we seek to boost awareness, and take steps towards negotiating the difficult challenges the GSR faces in a future of unprecedented coastal population growth and global change.

Subfields: Ecology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3f79fda5d8ebd97ec658323e98a35f74a615a4c4

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Citations in the corpus

Tropicalisation of temperate reefs: Implications for ecosystem functions and management actions (2019, background): “Exceptions to this include the Great Southern Reef (GSR) in Australia (Bennett et al., 2016), which runs across the entire southern edge of the continent (including Tasmania), but ends at 39oS and has few stepping stones or connections further south towards Antarctica.”
Global patterns of kelp forest change over the past half-century (2016, background): “However, where kelp resilience is eroding and leading to declines in abundance (7, 18, 54, 64, 66, 67), impacts to ecosystem health and services can be far-reaching (19, 25, 26, 68, 69).”
Physiological responses of habitat‐forming seaweeds to increasing temperatures (2016, background): “Kelps and fucoids are ecologically and socioeconomically important large brown seaweeds that are abundant in temperate reef ecosystems (Smale et al. 2013; Steneck and Johnson 2013; Bennett et al. 2016).”
Seaweed production: overview of the global state of exploitation, farming and emerging research activity (2017, background): “…kelp forests that cover ~71 000 km2 of the southern coast of Australia function as a great reef, supporting biodiversity and generating an estimated value of US$7.7 billion annually (~US$110 000 km–2 year–1) in fishing (provisioning services), tourism and cultural services (Bennett et al., 2015b).”
Resistance, Extinction, and Everything in Between – The Diverse Responses of Seaweeds to Marine Heatwaves (2019, background): “Seaweeds represent essential components of coastal habitats and underpin highly diverse ecosystems (Wernberg et al., 2013a; Bennett et al., 2016; Teagle et al., 2017).”
Network resilience (2020, background): “$10 billion Australian dollars per year [168], and endanger thousands of endemic species supported by the kelp forests of Australia’s Great Southern Reef.”