Marine protected areas and resilience to sedimentation in the Solomon Islands
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Marine protected areas and resilience to sedimentation in the Solomon Islands B. S. Halpern • K. A. Selkoe • C. White S. Albert • S. Aswani • M. Lauer
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Received: 30 April 2012 / Accepted: 1 November 2012 / Published online: 17 November 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract The ability of marine protected areas (MPAs) to provide protection from indirect stressors, via increased resilience afforded by decreased impact from direct stressors, remains an important and unresolved question about the role MPAs can play in broader conservation and resource management goals. Over a five-year period, we evaluated coral and fish community responses inside and outside three MPAs within the Roviana Lagoon system in Solomon Islands, where sedimentation pressure from upland logging is substantial. We found little evidence that MPAs decrease impact or improve conditions and instead found some potential declines in fish abundance. We also documented modest to high levels of poaching during this period. Where compliance with management is poor, and indirect stressors play a dominant role in determining Communicated by Biology Editor Dr. Glenn Almany B. S. Halpern (&) K. A. Selkoe National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, 735 State St., Suite 300, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. S. Halpern K. A. Selkoe C. White Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA S. Albert Centre for Water Futures, Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia S. Aswani Departments of Anthropology and IGP Marine Science, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3210, USA M. Lauer Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-6040, USA
ecosystem condition, as appears to be the case in Roviana Lagoon, MPAs may provide little management benefit. Keywords Marine reserves Sedimentation Logging Cumulative impacts Dominant stressor Coral triangle
Introduction Marine protected areas (MPAs) are being developed and implemented at an increasing pace around the world, driven in part by greater local and regional urgency to protect ocean biodiversity and ecosystems and mitigate the impacts of fishing, as well as by various national and international conventions stipulating such action (e.g., CBD 2010). Evidence is now overwhelming that MPAs can protect species from direct impacts such as fishing and restore populations within MPA boundaries when these stressors are removed (Halpern 2003; Lester et al. 2009). What remains much less clear is whether MPAs are an effective tool for addressing stressors to marine systems that originate outside the boundaries of the MPA, such as land-based point and non-point pollution or climate change. The mechanism for conservation in these cases is not mitigation of the stressor, but instead enhanced resilience to the stressor through improved general condition of the system, as measured, for example, by the abu
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