Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae
Type
ArticleAuthors
Duffy, J. EmmettBenedetti-Cecchi, Lisandro
Trinanes, Joaquin
Muller-Karger, Frank E.
Ambo-Rappe, Rohani
Boström, Christoffer
Buschmann, Alejandro H.
Byrnes, Jarrett
Coles, Robert G.
Creed, Joel
Cullen-Unsworth, Leanne C.
Diaz-Pulido, Guillermo
Duarte, Carlos M.

Edgar, Graham J.
Fortes, Miguel
Goni, Gustavo
Hu, Chuanmin
Huang, Xiaoping
Hurd, Catriona L.
Johnson, Craig
Konar, Brenda
Krause-Jensen, Dorte
Krumhansl, Kira
Macreadie, Peter
Marsh, Helene
McKenzie, Len J.
Mieszkowska, Nova
Miloslavich, Patricia
Montes, Enrique
Nakaoka, Masahiro
Norderhaug, Kjell Magnus
Norlund, Lina M.
Orth, Robert J.
Prathep, Anchana
Putman, Nathan F.
Samper-Villarreal, Jimena
Serrao, Ester A.
Short, Frederick
Pinto, Isabel Sousa
Steinberg, Peter
Stuart-Smith, Rick
Unsworth, Richard K. F.
van Keulen, Mike
van Tussenbroek, Brigitta I.
Wang, Mengqiu
Waycott, Michelle
Weatherdon, Lauren V.
Wernberg, Thomas
Yaakub, Siti Maryam
KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionMarine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
Date
2019-07-04Submitted Date
2018-11-07Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/661629
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In coastal waters around the world, the dominant primary producers are benthic macrophytes, including seagrasses and macroalgae, that provide habitat structure and food for diverse and abundant biological communities and drive ecosystem processes. Seagrass meadows and macroalgal forests play key roles for coastal societies, contributing to fishery yields, storm protection, biogeochemical cycling and storage, and important cultural values. These socio-economically valuable services are threatened worldwide by human activities, with substantial areas of seagrass and macroalgal forests lost over the last half-century. Tracking the status and trends in marine macrophyte cover and quality is an emerging priority for ocean and coastal management, but doing so has been challenged by limited coordination across the numerous efforts to monitor macrophytes, which vary widely in goals, methodologies, scales, capacity, governance approaches, and data availability. Here, we present a consensus assessment and recommendations on the current state of and opportunities for advancing global marine macrophyte observations, integrating contributions from a community of researchers with broad geographic and disciplinary expertise. With the increasing scale of human impacts, the time is ripe to harmonize marine macrophyte observations by building on existing networks and identifying a core set of common metrics and approaches in sampling design, field measurements, governance, capacity building, and data management. We recommend a tiered observation system, with improvement of remote sensing and remote underwater imaging to expand capacity to capture broad-scale extent at intervals of several years, coordinated with stratified in situ sampling annually to characterize the key variables of cover and taxonomic or functional group composition, and to provide ground-truth. A robust networked system of macrophyte observations will be facilitated by establishing best practices, including standard protocols, documentation, and sharing of resources at all stages of workflow, and secure archiving of open-access data. Because such a network is necessarily distributed, sustaining it depends on close engagement of local stakeholders and focusing on building and long-term maintenance of local capacity, particularly in the developing world. Realizing these recommendations will produce more effective, efficient, and responsive observing, a more accurate global picture of change in vegetated coastal systems, and stronger international capacity for sustaining observations.Citation
Duffy, J. E., Benedetti-Cecchi, L., Trinanes, J., Muller-Karger, F. E., Ambo-Rappe, R., Boström, C., … Yaakub, S. M. (2019). Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae. Frontiers in Marine Science, 6. doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00317Sponsors
This is contribution 34 from the Smithsonian's MarineGEO Network. JT was funded by NOAA/OceanWatch & GG was funded by NOAA/AOML. This manuscript is also a contribution to the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, and to the Integrated Marine Biosphere Research (IMBeR) project, which is supported by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and Future Earth. The work leading up to the manuscript was funded in part under the US National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP RFP NOAA-NOS-IOOS-2014-2003803 in partnership between NOAA, BOEM, NASA, the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program Office, and NSF. Specifically, the MBON work was funded through NASA grant NNX14AP62A to FM-K [National Marine Sanctuaries as Sentinel Sites for a Demonstration Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON)].Publisher
Frontiers Media SAJournal
Frontiers in Marine ScienceAdditional Links
https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2019.00317/fullhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00317/pdf
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.3389/fmars.2019.00317
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Archived with thanks to Frontiers in Marine Science