Data Analysis & Interpretation

Sediment runoff from disturbed coastal catchments is a major threat to marine ecosystems. Understanding where sediments are produced and where they are delivered enables managers to design more effective strategies for improving water quality.

This report summarises the first results of the Global Futures initiative – a partnership between WWF, the Global Trade Analysis Project and the Natural Capital Project – which has developed an innovative new model to calculate the impacts of nature’s decline on the world’s economies, trade and i

Difficulties in scaling up theoretical and experimental results have raised controversy over the consequences of biodiversity loss for the functioning of natural ecosystems.

The magnitude and pace of global change demand rapid assessment of nature and its contributions to people. We present a fine-scale global modeling of current status and future scenarios for several contributions: water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination.

The expedition was conducted by KSLOF, a US-based nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health.

The Global Reef Expedition: The Kingdom of Palau Final Report provides a summary of the foundation’s findings along with valuable information on the state of coral reefs and reef f

On the Global Reef Expedition—one of the largest coral reef studies in history—the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation conducted research in the Solomon Islands to map and characterize shallow marine habitats and assess the status of coral reef benthic and fish communities.

Connectivity of protected areas (PAs) is needed to ensure the long-term persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery. The Convention on Biological Diversity agreed in 2010 to have 17% of land covered by wellconnected PA systems by 2020 (Aichi Target 11).

Our global analysis of nearly 1,800 tropical reefs reveals how the intensity of human impacts in the surrounding seascape, measured as a function of human population size and accessibility to reefs (“gravity”), diminishes the effectiveness of marine reserves at sustaining reef fish biomass and th

The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) presents these guidelines for undertaking rapid biodiversity assessments in its Pacific island member countries and territories: Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. These assessments are referred to as BIORAPs.

Sharks and rays are key functional components of coral reef ecosystems, yet many populations of a few species exhibit signs of depletion and local extinctions. The question is whether these declines forewarn of a global extinction crisis.

Coral reefs worldwide are suffering mass mortalities from marine heat waves. With the aim of enhancing coral bleaching tolerance, we evolved 10 clonal strains of a common coral microalgal endosymbiont at elevated temperatures (31°C) for 4 years in the laboratory.

Effective networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) are explicitly recognized and called for in international biodiversity conservation strategies such as the Aichi Targets.

This guidebook offers managers and other conservation practitioners a process and methods to evaluate the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for the purposes of Adaptive Management.

Biodiversity offsets (BO) are increasingly promoted and adopted by governments and companies worldwide as a policy instrument to compensate for biodiversity losses from infrastructure development projects. To provide a framing for understanding the empirical diversity of BO policy designs, w

The impacts of human-induced environmental change that characterize the Anthropocene are not felt equally across the globe.

In 2017, following growing public concerns about saltwater crocodile attacks on people, the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology (MECDM), the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) and WorldFish conducted a nationwide survey to collect detailed i

Over a million species face extinction, highlighting the urgent need for conservation policies that maximize the protection of biodiversity to sustain its manifold contributions to people’s lives.

Houk, P.  2010. Improving Local Capacity for Coral Reef Monitoring Data Interpretation.

Evaluation, the process of assessing the effectiveness of programs and activities, has gained increasing attention in the conservation sector as programs seek to account for investments, measure their impacts, and adapt interventions to improve future outcomes.

Advances in spatial biodiversity science and nationally available data have enabled the development of indicators that report on biodiversity outcomes, account for uneven global biodiversity between countries, and provide direct planning support.

Ocean warming is causing declines of coral reefs globally, raising critical questions about the potential for corals to adapt. In the central equatorial Pacific, reefs persisting through recurrent El Niño heatwaves hold important clues.

Hodgson, G., Hill, J., Kiene, W., Maun, L., Mihaly, J., Liebeler, J., Shuman, C. and Torres, R. 2006. Instruction Manual.  A Guide to Reef Check Monitoring . Reef Check Foundation, Pacific Palisades, California, USA

Long-term ecological monitoring of reef fish populations often requires the simultaneous collection of data on benthic habitats in order to account for the effects of these variables on fish assemblage structure.

Larval dispersal is the key process by which populations of most marine fishes and invertebrates are connected and replenished.

Conservation science is having a reckoning with “parachute science”.

The devastating emergence of the virus causing COVID-19 has led to increased interest in the factors that result in pandemics and other disease outbreaks.

Understanding the behaviour of humpback whale mother-calf pairs and the acoustic environment on their breeding grounds is fundamental to assessing the biological and ecological requirements needed to ensure a successful migration and survival of calves.

Even optimistic climate scenarios predict catastrophic consequences for coral reef ecosystems by 2100. Understanding how reef connectivity, biodiversity and resilience are shaped by climate variability would improve chances to establish sustainable management practices.

Biodiversity is suffering dramatic declines across the globe, threatening the ability of ecosystems to provide the services on which humanity depends. Mainstreaming biodiversity into the plans, strategies and policies of different economic sectors is key to reversing these declines.

An increasing number of international initiatives aim to reconcile development with conservation. Crucial to successful implementation of these initiatives is a comprehensive understanding of the current ecological condition of landscapes and their spatial distributions.

The world’s fast disappearing mangrove forests have low plant diversity and are often assumed to also have a species-poor insect fauna.

Meeting global commitments to conservation, climate, and sustainable development requires consideration of synergies and tradeoffs among targets.

With marine biodiversity declining globally at accelerating rates, maximising the effectiveness of conservation has become a key goal for local, national and international regulators.

Identifying hotspots of biological diversity is a key step in conservation prioritisation. Melanesia—centred on the vast island of New Guinea—is increasingly recognised for its exceptionally species-rich and endemic biota.

Wilkinson, C., Hill, J. 2004. Methods for Ecological Monitoring of Coral Reefs. A Resource for Managers. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Australia and Reef Check, Los Angeles, USA.  117pp.

Hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) are exploited for their beautiful shell known as tortoiseshell or bekko, making them extremely vulnerable in the illegal global trade of tortoiseshell products.

Wilkinson,C., Green, A.,  Almany, J., Dionne, S. 2003. Monitoring Coral Reef Marine Protected Areas:  Version 1.

To determine the baseline threat of microplastics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in an important seafood fish from Vueti Navakavu locally managed marine area, a multi-biomarker risk assessment was conducted on the thumbprint emperor fish Lethrinus harak...In this multi-bioma

Community-based approaches to conservation and natural resource management are considered essential to meeting global conservation targets.

The findings of this BIORAP survey have identified or re-confirmed the critical importance of the biodiversity and ecosystems of Nauru's terrestrial and marine environments and the urgent need for follow-up activities to manage and mitigate threats for their conservation.

The world has recognized the reefs of New Caledonia as hosting some of the most beautiful and well-preserved tropical marine habitats, globally. New Caledonia is isolated in the southwest Pacific Ocean, about 1,300 km east of Australia.

The persistent, non-native invasive alga Gracilaria salicornia has dominated the protected waters surrounding Moku o Loʻe, Kāneʻohe Bay since its introduction in 1978; however, a sudden decline in abundance (75%) occurred within a 30-day survey period.

Data on the occurrence and abundance of meso and microplastics for the South Pacific are limited and there is urgent need to fill this knowledge gap.

The ocean has been experiencing substantial changes in marine physics, chemistry and biology including ocean acidification, rising seawater temperature, ocean deoxygenation and sea level rise.

Protected areas are central in strategies to conserve biodiversity. Effective area-based conservation relies on biodiversity data, but the current biodiversity knowledge base is insufficient and limited by geographic and taxonomic biases.

This package/collection of training materials constitute an introductory, basic-level training to open source GIS software (QGIS) targeting technical-level government officers.

This package/collection of training materials constitute an introductory, basic-level training to open source GIS software (QGIS) targeting technical-level government officers.

This package/collection of training materials constitute an introductory, basic-level training to open source GIS software (QGIS) targeting technical-level government officers.

Deciding when to protect threatened species habitat when complete knowledge about the habitat extent is uncertain is a common problem in conservation. More accurate habitat mapping improves conservation outcomes once that habitat is protected.