Spatial resilience of the Great Barrier Reef under cumulative disturbance impacts

A high-resolution, spatially explicit model of coral dynamics on the Great Barrier Reef reveals that coral resilience is negatively impacted by river plume conditions and reef accessibility, with outer shelf communities exhibiting the highest growth rates due to favorable environmental conditions. Despite being in no-take marine protected areas, inner-shelf reefs showed lower resilience primarily due to poor water quality. The model projects a mean annual coral loss of −0.67%/year from 1996 to 2017, driven mainly by cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, and bleaching. This validated platform identifies reefs at risk of biodiversity loss and those with potential to persist under increasing disturbance regimes.

Mellin, C., Matthews, S., Anthony, K. R. N., Brown, S. C., Caley, M. J., Johns, K. A., Osborne, K., Puotinen, M., Thompson, A., Wolff, N. H., Fordham, D. A., & MacNeil, M. A. (2019). Spatial resilience of the Great Barrier Reef under cumulative disturbance impacts. Global Change Biology, 25(7), 2431–2445. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14625