Glob. Change Biol. http://doi.org/fxh53r (2012)
Warming ocean temperatures have been implicated in the degradation of the world's coral reefs. Marine protected areas (MPAs) provide one tool to increase coral reef ecosystem resistance and resilience (that is, recovery) to the negative effects of climate change, yet few studies have evaluated their efficacy in this regard.
Elizabeth Selig, from Conservation International, Arlington, USA, and co-workers used high-resolution global temperature records for 1985–2005 together with over 8,000 live coral surveys from protected and unprotected reefs to investigate whether MPAs have indeed helped to minimize temperature-driven coral loss.
Results suggest that protection in MPAs has generally not reduced the negative effects of warm-temperature events on coral cover. Shortcomings in MPA design may have contributed to the lack of a beneficial effect. Nevertheless, these findings do suggest that the benefits from MPAs may not be great enough to offset the losses from acute thermal-stress events, implying that additional conservation strategies may be required to combat coral loss from thermal stress.
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Brown, A. No escaping the heat. Nature Clim Change 2, 230 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1479
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1479
