Bohensky, Erin, Curnock, Matt, Gillet, Sarah, Goldberg, Jeremy, Gooch, Margaret, Marshall, Nadine, Pert, Petina, Scherl, Lea, Stone-Jovicich, Samantha, and Tobin, Renae (2014) The Social and Economic Long Term Monitoring Program (SELTMP) 2013: drivers of change in the Great Barrier Reef. Report. Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, Cairns, QLD, Australia.

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Abstract

[Extract] Introduction. The Great Barrier Reef region, including the people and industries it supports, is influenced by a range of drivers from global to local scales. We define a driver as any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes a change in the GBR system (see SELTMP 2011 for a more in-depth discussion of drivers).

Drivers are important to monitor so that we are able:

•To understand mechanisms of change in the variables we monitor

•To anticipate and begin to predict outcomes

•To document the context or "backdrop" of change — in 25 years' time, what will we need to know to interpret change?

These drivers themselves change over time (Figure 1) and the direction, magnitude and speed of change can be uncertain; hence monitoring programs need to be adaptive (Lindenmayer and Likens 2009).

In this chapter we:

1. Present drivers that were identified in eight SELTMP end user meetings in 2011, the first year of SELTMP, and then present comparative data from a workshop in 2013.

2. We then show how we categorised drivers identified in 2011 and from this, define six driver categories to be monitored. We focus on indirect drivers of change (MEA 2003) — underlying causes of pressures on the GBR —which are most relevant to the social and economic dimensions of the reef. Direct drivers such as biophysical processes of climate change and run-off are monitored by other research programs. However, SELTMP is interested in perceptions of climate change and policies to address it, for example.

3. Present "wishlist" indicators identified by the Drivers of Change Working Group or in the literature for each of the six key categories of drivers, and some of the data collected. Some categories, such as social and cultural drivers, and politics and management, are not easily generalised, and can be highly specific to the GBR region and the different end user groups.

Item ID:	32675
Item Type:	Report (Report)
Funders:	Australian Government’s National Environmental Research Program (NERP)
Date Deposited:	21 Sep 2016 03:39
FoR Codes:	05 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 0502 Environmental Science and Management > 050209 Natural Resource Management @ 100%
SEO Codes:	96 ENVIRONMENT > 9606 Environmental and Natural Resource Evaluation > 960604 Environmental Management Systems @ 100%
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