A consortium of environment experts have drafted a set of guidelines to help restore the declining number of coral reefs in the waters of the Carribean. The guidelines include a definite plan for raising, collecting and the replanting of corals to maximize their potential for climate change adaptation.
The paper with these guidelines has been published in the journal Ecological Applications in July of this year.
"The Carribean has undergone a tremendous loss of corals in the last few decades that the restoration of corals has become one of its most urgent issues in the region," said Iliana Baums, chair of the Coral Restoration Consortium and a professor of Biology at Penn State. She headed the restoration genetics working group. "However, a few of the guidelines for conservation, which focuses more on the protection and propagation of vertebrates or plants, apply well to the coral conditions. In this paper, we included guidelines to restore coral populations utilizing the best available data."
Corals are the foundation of reefs which in turn provides protection to coral communities. Not only do they provide the physical protection, but they also become the source of food and medicinal compounds, which basically leads to an estimate of $9.9 trillion per year in goods and services all over the globe. Despite the importance of the role that they play, the reefs worldwide are continuously facing threats of extinction. On top of these threats is the warming of the ocean temperatures and the declining nutrients in the Carribean.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has asked the help of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide them with a report that shows an overview of the 23 coral restoration strategies that are in practice today. Most of these strategies have been left untested and are not fully ready for implementation.
"The guidelines presented in this new paper are ready for testing immediately. They are grounded on the hypothesis that coral populations have their own natural way to respond to the changes in their environment. They are able to respond to change and prepare themselves from a possible genetic diversity," said Baums. "We are more focused on developing the genetic diversity of coral populations, which hopefully will provide corals with a more diverse array of options to help them adapt to their changing environment."
"By taking advantage of the climate models created by scientists , people can not anticipate which of the practices in coral reef protection will work best at this time," Baums said.
