Action

Identify/designate high biodiversity areas

How is the evidence assessed?
  • Effectiveness
    not assessed
  • Certainty
    not assessed
  • Harms
    not assessed

Study locations

Key messages

  • One study examined the effects of identifying/designating high biodiversity areas on corals. The study was in Australia.

COMMUNITY RESPONSE (1 STUDY)

  • Richness/diversity (1 study): One site comparison study in Australia found that a site given a designation due to its high biodiversity had a distinct community assemblage compared to a site with no designation.

POPULATION RESPONSE (1 STUDY)

  • Abundance/Cover (1 study): One site comparison study in Australia found that a site with a high biodiversity designation had lower cover of all benthic species (including hard and soft corals) across four depth categories compared to a site with no designation.

About key messages

Key messages provide a descriptive index to studies we have found that test this intervention.

Studies are not directly comparable or of equal value. When making decisions based on this evidence, you should consider factors such as study size, study design, reported metrics and relevance of the study to your situation, rather than simply counting the number of studies that support a particular interpretation.

Supporting evidence from individual studies

  1. A site comparison study in 2013 at two coral reef sites off the Pilbara coast, northwest Australia (bdul Wahab et al. 2018) found that a site that had been designated as an area of high biodiversity had a distinct community assemblage (including corals), but lower cover of benthic taxa (including hard and soft corals) compared to another site with no designation. Percentage cover of coral families and morphologies were both more strongly influenced by site than a range of environmental variables (data reported as statistical model result, see paper for details). The site with a biodiversity designation had lower cover of all benthic taxa (including hard and soft corals) at four depth categories (21, 9, 2 and <1%) compared to the site with no designation (44, 36, 21 and 6%). The highest hard coral cover at the designated site was recorded at <40 m depth (3%), but the undesignated site had cover of 23% at this depth. The highest soft coral cover at the designated site was found at <40 m (4%) but found at 40–≥80 m at the undesignated site (1–2%). Two isolated reef sites were selected, one that was designated as a Key Ecological Feature (14,700 ha) and one with no designation (1,700 ha). Surveys of community composition and cover (including corals) were conducted in 2013 via towed video surveys (2 km tows), with 53 tows in the designated site and 23 in the undesignated site. A range of methods were used to assess other environmental variables (see paper for details).

    Study and other actions tested
Please cite as:

Thornton A., Morgan, W.H., Bladon E.K., Smith R.K. & Sutherland W.J. (2024) Coral Conservation: Global evidence for the effects of actions. Conservation Evidence Series Synopsis. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Where has this evidence come from?

List of journals searched by synopsis

All the journals searched for all synopses

Coral Conservation

This Action forms part of the Action Synopsis:

Coral Conservation
Coral Conservation

Coral Conservation - Published 2024

Coral synopsis

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