Projects
| Title | Coral Reef Threats - Opinions of Coral Reef Researchers |
| Type | Research Project |
| URL | no url available |
| Abstract | In 1993, Robert Ginsburg chaired a colloquium entitled “Global Aspects of Coral Reefs: Health, Hazards and History” (Ginsburg, 1994). The meeting included a survey whereby each of the 120 participants was asked to prepare lists of all the potential hazards to reefs in their geographic region of expertise, and then to rank each hazard as high, medium or low. Some interesting trends emerged from the survey. The participants felt that the most widespread and serious hazards to coral reefs were: 1) nutrient enrichment, 2) overfishing, and 3) increased sedimentation and turbidity. Prior to the 10th International Coral Reef Symposium in Okinawa this year, we designed a survey based largely on the original survey, in an on-line web-based version. Prior to the meeting, we advertised the survey to meeting participants and to members of the International Society for Reef Studies (ISRS) via NOAA’s coral-list email server. Approximately 275 participants and ISRS members submitted the survey. This projects assesses these recent results and compares them to the previous survey. |
| Participants | Joanie Kleypas Mark Eakin (NOAA) |
| Start Date | January 2004 |
| Funders | |
| Keywords | opinion survey coral reefs threats |
| Research Themes | Climate-Ecosystem-Human Interactions Vulnerability, Adaptation, Thresholds and Resilience |
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| "Because the pathway to sustainability cannot be
charted in advance, it will have to be navigated through trial and error and conscious experimentation. The urgent need is to
design strategies and institutions that can better integrate incomplete knowledge with experimental action into programs of
adaptive management and social learning." |
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