Evidence that marine reserves enhance resilience to climatic impacts.

ABSTRACT: Establishment of marine protected areas, including fully protected marine reserves, is one of the few management tools available for local communities to combat the deleterious effect of large scale environmental impacts, including global climate change, on ocean ecosystems. Despite the common hope that reserves play this role, empirical evidence of the effectiveness of local protection against global problems is lacking. Here we show that marine reserves increase the resilience of marine populations to a mass mortality event possibly caused by climate-driven hypoxia. Despite high and widespread adult mortality of benthic invertebrates in Baja California, Mexico, that affected populations both within and outside marine reserves, juvenile replenishment of the species that supports local eco

SUBMITTER: Micheli F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3408031 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature