Program Leader: Dr Julian Caley, Australian
Institute of Marine Science
Climate change is one of the most significant
threats to the sustainable use of coral reefs in Australia and
worldwide (IPCC 2001). The Climate Change (Marine) program
(Program 5i) addresses specific information gaps of direct
relevance and importance to users of the Great Barrier Reef and
those charged with its sustainable management. This program
addresses high priority issues for climate change impacts on the
Great Barrier Reef:
-
Regional climate change scenarios – evaluating possible
futures for the GBR ecosystem on the basis of our present knowledge
and forecasted climate changes;
-
Early Warning and Assessment System for thermal stress on the
Great Barrier Reef;
-
Resilience of coral reef ecosystems to climate change; and
-
Tools to support resilience-based management in the face of
climate change.
Understanding the potential impacts of
climate change on the Great Barrier Reef and management options for
promoting adaptation, and minimising and remediating its impacts,
is critical to the long-term sustainable use of this valuable
natural asset. This program describes a large-scale,
integrated approach for understanding how environmental conditions
will change in the near future, how these changes will impact the
species that make up the reef, how resilient these species are
likely to be to such impacts, and what are the best management
options for minimising the risks of climate change to these reef
communities.
Expected outcomes from this program will
include greatly improved understanding of the links between
atmospheric and oceanic conditions on the hydrodynamics around
reefs at small spatial scales. These models will facilitate
better understanding of how climate change will change water
circulation patterns and how such changes will affect the
environmental conditions faced by the organisms living on these
reefs. Linked to these models will be the development of an
early warning system for coral bleaching. To deliver this
objective, further research will be done to better define the
tolerances of corals to increasing water temperatures, how these
might vary, and how the impact of changing hydrodynamics might
affect other species such as seabirds. This information will
then be fed into research about how well these reef systems might
be able to cope with the impacts of climate change.
How best to use this information in a
management context will be the focus of the fourth project which
will concentrate on developing an atlas of climate change risk
including socio-economic risks and building tools for prioritising
management responses. To ensure the relevance of this
research program to end users, end user representatives were
consulted extensively throughout the development of this
program. To ensure ongoing relevance, end user
representatives are included within the program teams. Further
value and synergies will be derived from the close integration of
this program with Programs 5ii, 8, 1 and 10.
Program 5i involves four Projects:
Project
2.5i.1 - Hydrodynamics at the whole-of-GBR scale
Project 2.5i.2 -
Early warning and assessment system for thermal stress on the Great
Barrier Reef
Project 2.5i.3 -
Resilience to climate change
Project 2.5i.4 -
Tools to support resilience-based management in the face of climate
change
