Sovereign states in the Caribbean have lower social-ecological vulnerability to coral bleaching than overseas territories.

ABSTRACT: Coral reef social-ecological systems worldwide face major impacts from climate change, and spatial variation in vulnerability is driven by differential exposure to climatic threats, ecological and socio-economic sensitivity to those threats, ecological recovery potential, and socio-economic adaptive capacity. We assess variation in social-ecological vulnerability to climate change-induced coral bleaching, specifically for reef-based fisheries and tourism, of islands throughout the insular Caribbean, thus providing the first region-wide quantitative analysis of island-scale social-ecological vulnerability to coral bleaching. We show that different components of vulnerability have distinct spatial patterns and that variability in overall vulnerability is driven more by socio-economic than ec

SUBMITTER: Siegel KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6408901 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature