Climate Change and Coral Reefs

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Management and evolution give hope to coral reefs facing the effects of climate change

Thursday , August 01, 2019
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Madhavi Colton of the Coral Reef Alliance and Tim Walsworth of Utah State University will present a webinar on a new study published in Nature Climate Change shows that management that takes evolution and adaptation into account can help rescue coral reefs from the effects of climate change.

The results indicate that managing reefs to facilitate evolution today and in the future can enhance their prospects for long-term survival. Key to successful evolution is management that improves local conditions for reefs by effectively reducing local stressors, such as overfishing and water pollution. Contrary to approaches that are popular today, such as focusing protection on reefs in cooler water, the study shows that protecting diverse reef habitat types across a spectrum of ocean conditions is key to helping corals adapt to climate change. This means creating managed area networks that contain a diversity of coral types and habitats and that effectively reduce local stressors.

Read more about the study here, or read the paper online here.