Avaliação do potencial de resiliência dos recifes brasileiros : adaptação e aplicação de metodologia em uma unidade de conservação

Abstract

Reef ecosystems are constantly been threatened by anthropogenic activities and the resilience comes as an property that keeps ecosystem’s services and functions working, even under disturbs. However, due to relatively constant environmental conditions and favorable seasonal cycles, it is believed that reef environments are among the less resilient ecosystems on planet. Thus, comes the necessity of identifying potentially resilient reef sites for conservation, and fragile sites for managements. Here we brought an adaptation of “resilience potential analysis” (Maynard et al., 2010), tested on Australia. We adapted the methodology for Brazilian reef’s characteristics adding and excluding indicators from the literature and applied for the first time on a Brazilian marine protected area: Área de Proteção Ambiental da Costa dos Corais (APACC). Twenty indicators of resilience potential for Brazil were obtained, of which 6 were critically important, 6 were very important and 8 were important. Fifteen of them were adequate for APACC and approached by the Management council and a small group of researchers working in the area. The result of resilience potential rank were similar among groups, showing accuracy and precision, however, when applied with the Management council, the methodology was more precise, generating less disagreement among the evaluators. Through this application, we have seen that the current APACC’s zonation has been agreed on the choice of Marine Life Preservation Zones. We also identified a Visitation zone that stands out because of its high resilience potential. In addition, we pointed some reef formations that deserve more attention by APACC’s management, mainly because they have manageable indicators with such low scores. Connectivity was the indicator that most contributed to increasing area scoring, but fishing, pollution, and coral cover emerged as threats working to reduce resilience.