Tracing the influence of land-use change on water quality and coral reefs using a Bayesian model
Brown, Christopher J., Jupiter, Stacy D., Albert, Simon, Klein, Carissa J., Mangubhai, Sangeeta, Maina, Joseph M., Mumby, Peter, Olley, Jon, Stewart-Koster, Ben, Tulloch, Vivitskaia, and Wenger, Amelia (2017) Tracing the influence of land-use change on water quality and coral reefs using a Bayesian model. Scientific Reports, 7. 4740.
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Abstract
Coastal ecosystems can be degraded by poor water quality. Tracing the causes of poor water quality back to land-use change is necessary to target catchment management for coastal zone management. However, existing models for tracing the sources of pollution require extensive data-sets which are not available for many of the world's coral reef regions that may have severe water quality issues. Here we develop a hierarchical Bayesian model that uses freely available satellite data to infer the connection between land-uses in catchments and water clarity in coastal oceans. We apply the model to estimate the influence of land-use change on water clarity in Fiji. We tested the model's predictions against underwater surveys, finding that predictions of poor water quality are consistent with observations of high siltation and low coverage of sediment-sensitive coral genera. The model thus provides a means to link land-use change to declines in coastal water quality.
| Item ID: | 54141 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| Additional Information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Funders: | The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of Queensland (UQ) |
| Projects and Grants: | UQ Research Fellowship |
| Date Deposited: | 18 Jun 2018 23:44 |
| FoR Codes: | 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410402 Environmental assessment and monitoring @ 50% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4105 Pollution and contamination > 410599 Pollution and contamination not elsewhere classified @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9605 Ecosystem Assessment and Management > 960507 Ecosystem Assessment and Management of Marine Environments @ 50% 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9609 Land and Water Management > 960903 Coastal and Estuarine Water Management @ 50% |
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