A comparison of threats, vulnerabilities and management approaches in global seagrass bioregions

By Alana Grech, Katie Chartrand-Miller, P. Erftemeijer, M. Fonseca, L. McKenzie, M. Rasheed, H. Taylor, R. Coles. 2012

248 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Global seagrass habitats are threatened by multiple anthropogenic factors. Effective management of seagrasses requires information on the relative impacts of threats; however, this information is rarely available. Our goal was to use the knowledge of experts to assess the relative impacts of anthropogenic activities in six global seagrass bioregions. The activities that threaten seagrasses were identified at an international seagrass workshop and followed with a web-based survey to collect seagrass vulnerability information. There was a global consensus that urban/industrial runoff, urban/port infrastructure development, agricultural runoff and dredging had the greatest impact on seagrasses, though the order of relative impacts varied by bioregion. These activities are largely terrestrially based, highlighting the need for marine planning initiatives to be co-ordinated with adjacent watershed planning. Sea level rise and increases in the severity of cyclones were ranked highest relative to other climate change related activities, but overall the five climate change activities were ranked low and experts were uncertain of their effects on seagrasses. The experts’ preferred mechanism of delivering management outcomes were processes such as policy development, planning and consultation rather than prescriptive management tools. Our approach to collecting expert opinion provides the required data to prioritize seagrass management actions at bioregional scales.

Subfields: Ecology, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9ab7a2324dbf57cd967d4857552e08118c50e4e3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. Clive McAlpine
2. J. Rhodes
3. Mark A. Burgman
4. Mahadev G. Bhat
5. B. Dewsbury
6. J. Fourqurean
7. Charles R. Todd

In Oceanography

1. J. Rhodes
2. Mahadev G. Bhat
3. Clive McAlpine
4. B. Dewsbury
5. J. Fourqurean

Citations in the corpus

• A review of seagrass economic valuations: Gaps and progress in valuation approaches (2016, background): “Some recent studies have used more qualitative approaches to document the impacts of seagrass loss on local communities (Grech et al., 2012).”
• Use of expert knowledge to elicit population trends for the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) (2016, methodology): “Structured expert elicitation has been used to address a broad range of ecological topics (e.g. Grech et al., 2012; Marcot et al., 2012; McDaniels et al., 2012), including potentially dealing with uncertainty in an adaptive management context (Keith et al., 2011).”