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Assessing Anchor Damage on Coral Reefs: A Case Study in Selection of Environmental Indicators

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Abstract

Because environmental conservation can remove scarce natural resources from competing uses, it is important to gain support for conservation programs by demonstrating that management actions have been effective in achieving their goals. One way to do this is to show that selected significant environmental variables (indicators) vary between managed and unmanaged areas or change over time following implementation of a management regime. However, identifying indicators that reflect environmental conditions relevant to management practices has proven difficult. This paper focuses on developing a framework for choosing indicators in a coral reef habitat. The framework consisted of three phases: (1) information gathering to identify candidate variables; (2) field-testing candidate variables at sites that differ in intensity of human activity, thus identifying potential indicators; and (3) evaluating potential indicators against a set of feasibility criteria to identify the most useful indicators. To identify indicators suitable to measure the success of a management strategy to reduce anchor damage to a coral reef, 24 candidate variables were identified and evaluated at sites with different intensities of anchoring. In this study, measures that reflected injuries to coral colonies were generally more efficient than traditional measures of coral cover in describing the effects of anchoring. The number of overturned colonies was identified as the single most useful indicator of coral reef condition associated with anchoring intensities. The indicator selection framework developed here has the advantages of being transparent, cost efficient, and readily transferable to other types of human activities and management strategies.

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Acknowledgments

Research was supported by a scholarship from the CRC Reef Research Centre and a grant from the GBRMPA. Fieldwork was made possible with the support of Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the Hayman Island Resort. Special thanks to Mark Fenton and Peter Valentine for their support of the research and to numerous field assistants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Tropical Environment Studies and Geography, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia

    Elizabeth A. Dinsdale

  2. School of Environmental Science and Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, New South Wales 2480, Australia

    Vicki J. Harriott

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  1. Elizabeth A. Dinsdale
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  2. Vicki J. Harriott
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Correspondence to Elizabeth A. Dinsdale.

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Dinsdale, E., Harriott, V. Assessing Anchor Damage on Coral Reefs: A Case Study in Selection of Environmental Indicators . Environmental Management 33, 126–139 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-003-3056-9

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