[Coral-List] ICRS - mini symposium - effective coral reef conservation

Julie Scopélitis juliescop at gmail.com
Thu Jul 7 20:08:22 EDT 2011


Dear listers,


we would be very pleased to receive your abstract submissions to our session
(18c) entitled:

*Spatially-explicit and multi-disciplinary approaches for effective coral
reef conservation.*


Please find below the abstract and target questions to be addressed. A range
of experts from various disciplines will be gathered around the table to
insure fruitful discussion on the multiple aspects at stake in this session..


***Abstract*

Effective coral reef conservation must consider many features interacting
across wide ranges of spatial, temporal, and thematic scales; these include
marine habitats and species, oceanographic and physical conditions,
traditional, recreational, and commercial resource use, threats and impacts,
and social values of an area.  Conservation strategies are also more
operational when these parameters are spatially integrated, tradeoffs are
considered, and potential solutions are geo-referenced and comprehensively
presented. This mini-symposium will highlight how spatially-explicit and
multi-disciplinary approaches enhance the capacity to conserve coral reefs
and associated resources. Presentations will address this through
applications for monitoring and management, reef health and resource stock
assessment, marine protected area design, risk assessment in light of global
and local stressors, modelling for scenario testing, and capacity building.
They will demonstrate the challenges, successes, advantages, and innovations
of combining multiple disciplines and explicitly accounting for and
prioritising features spatially. The practical applications and utility of
these approaches to local populations, managers, and stakeholders will also
be demonstrated.



*Scientific questions:*

The scientific questions that will be addressed in this mini-symposium are
as follow

1-      How do spatially-explicit approaches enhance our abilities to
conserve coral reefs and their resources?

2-      What are the implications of spatially-explicit approaches for
monitoring coral reefs and their natural and human environments and
resources?

3-      How can spatially-explicit, multi-disciplinary information enhance
our ability to predict the future of reefs in the context of changing
climate?

4       How can site level field data (social, ecological, and biophysical)
on coral reef be integrated into remote sensing and modelling to enhance
habitat and large-scale prediction of resilience?
            5-     How can such information be transferred effectively to
local populations, managers and stakeholders and integrated into local and
regional management and policy?


Looking forward to hearing from you
kind regards
Julie Scopelitis

on behalf of the team
Dr. Serge Andréfouët: specialist in remote sensing; includes a component for
applications to reef system management via resource assessment, MPA design,
and biodiversity
Dr. Julie Scopélitis: specialist in coral reef dynamics in space and time
integrating remote sensing, GIS and in situ information to monitor changes.
Dr. Sam Purkis: specialist in remote sensing, and modelling to monitor coral
reef systems and their dynamics.
Dr. Ameer Abdulla: specialist on marine biodiversity and conservation
science and integrating coral reef field data on ecological resilience into
marine and systematic spatial planning in
developing countries.
Dr. Shankar Aswani: specialist in anthropology and marine science, and
integrating social and marine science to remote sensing tool for designing
marine protected areas in the Pacific islands.
Dr. Johnathan Kool: specialist in spatially-explicit modelling, especially
modeling connectivity and genetic structure of regional-scale coral reef
systems over time.



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