Queensland Premier's Fellowship Report - Summary

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SCIENCE, SOLUTIONS AND THE FUTURE: THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IN A TIME OF CHANGE A SUMMARY OF THE FINAL SYNTHESIS STAKEHOLDER REPORT QUEENSLAND PREMIER’S FELLOWSHIP

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg | The Global Change Institute | The University of Queensland

The Queensland Government established the Premier’s Fellowships to further build “leadership capacity within Queensland’s research community and to position Queensland at the forefront of cutting edge research, development and innovation”.

The principle objective of the program was to entice experienced scientists of national and international prominence to lead Queensland-based research teams.

Science, Solutions and the Future was designed to fill knowledge gaps relating to climate change and its potential long-term impacts on the Great Barrier Reef. With access to more comprehensive scientific knowledge, reef managers and decision-makers are now better placed to develop strategies and policies to support reef resilience under a changing climate.

ABOUT THE FELLOW Drawn to the ocean as a child, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg studied marine science at the University of Sydney and later at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has spent more than 20 years improving the understanding of marine ecosystems, particularly the impact of environmental change.

Together with students and colleagues from the Coral Reef Ecosystems Laboratory at The University of Queensland (UQ), Professor HoeghGuldberg has studied the impacts of ocean warming and acidification on marine ecosystems. His contributions have led to him being awarded the Eureka Prize for Scientific Research in 1999 and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2013 and has been the Deputy Director of the Queensland-based ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies since 2005. Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has served in several international roles including as Chair of the Blue Ribbon Panel of the Global Partnership for Oceans and Coordinating Lead Author on the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Chapter 30: The Ocean).

Through the support of the Premier’s Fellowship, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has pursued innovative solutions, collaborated widely and communicated discoveries to global audiences made.

In addition, he developed the concept of, and created UQ’s Global Change Institute (GCI). The Institute opened its doors in 2010 and is firmly focused on a ‘solutions’ agenda with respect to the challenges of environmental change. GCI focuses on the key research areas of ocean health, clean energy technology, sustainable water and food systems.

AUSTRALIAN PROJECT SPONSORS AND COLLABORATORS The Fellowship was a collaborative venture that aimed to connect state, national and international research with management teams and resources, to ensure a sustainable future for Queensland through science-based solutions to climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.

HOST INSTITUTION The University of Queensland www.uq.edu.au

CO-SPONSORS The Queensland Government www.qld.gov.au/dsitia Great Barrier Reef Foundation www.barrierreef.org Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority www.gbrmpa.gov.au

COLLABORATORS ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies www.coralcoe.org.au World Bank-Global Environment Facility Coral Reef Targeted Research and Capacity Building for Management Project www.gefcoral.org Australian Institute of Marine Science www.aims.gov.au Great Barrier Reef Ocean Observing System Project http://data.aims.gov.au/gbroos/ There were also a number of national and international partners including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

MANAGEMENT MATTERS The Great Barrier Reef is under increasing pressure from a range of human and environmental impacts, including climate change. Therefore scientific knowledge is critical to provide evidence of the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem in order to manage its increasing and competing uses.

Knowledge, understanding and solutions generated through science can help reef managers, policy makers and decision-makers protect the Great Barrier Reef in a time of great change. You can’t manage what you don’t understand.

HOW WILL THE SCIENCE IN THE PREMIER’S FELLOWSHIP RESEARCH PROGRAM HELP WITH REEF MANAGEMENT? The short answer is: in lots of ways. For example: • Innovative and cutting-edge research carried out at kilometre scales across the Great Barrier Reef provides insights and a baseline of contemporary changes in reef health, which are critical in managing reef resilience and use.

• Science provides administrators with the tools and understanding necessary to manage the multitude of issues impacting the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. This, in turn, gives managers the confidence and credibility to administer key resources necessary for the reef’s survival.

• Extensive monitoring of coral reefs by the Catlin Seaview Survey team is establishing new technologies in order to build a baseline reference database to improve understanding of how the reef is changing.

Information is made available through the free-access database the Global Reef Record (http:// globalreefrecord.org/home_scientific).

The importance of the database can already be seen: recent surveys have compared existing information to rapidly establish how cyclones and bleaching events are affecting specific reef areas.

• Fundamental science is crucial to mitigating the impacts of environmental change and provides critical information to adaptively

GLOBAL CHANGE INSTITUTE

manage the Great Barrier Reef.

Meaningful measurements allow for notions of future environmental change to be tested in real time and on-reef with the results being made available to reef managers.

• New satellite tools are giving managers greater information about changes in environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, sediments) and risks to the reef. This high-level information is helping develop early warning systems and is informing management of emerging issues associated with the reef’s health.

• This program has advanced understanding of the biology and oceanography of the Great Barrier Reef region, which is critical to meeting conservation objectives.

Such information provides reef managers with an evidence-base upon which to make decisions concerning the reef’s likely future state and management.

• By exploring key aspects of the biochemistry and physiology of host symbiont interactions, the Fellowship deepened understanding of stress factors, thereby helping managers improve policy initiatives. Further, invaluable insights into the causes of coral bleaching will be critical for attempting to understand and

manage the impacts of climate change on the reef.

• The research has an important role in informing the planning and mitigation measures for the future impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef. It is also vital to the development of other science that leads to the production of management tools including satellite algorithms for predicting bleaching mortality and recovery.

• The mesophotic (30-200 m) zone of the reef is almost completely unstudied yet contains an equal, if not greater, biodiversity than the more shallow sections of the reef. The research used innovative technology to show that the upper mesophotic zone (30–60 m) appears to hold the greatest potential to aid in reef recovery following disturbance. This discovery can now be factored into future management plans regarding Great Barrier Reef recovery and resilience.

• Research and discovery from the Premier’s Fellowship will provide reef managers, policy makers and decision-makers with the science required to reach informed, evidencebased management decisions regarding the future sustainability of the Great Barrier Reef – in a time of great change.

The University of Queensland St Lucia QLD 4072 Australia T +61 7 3443 3100 E gci@uq.edu.au W www.gci.uq.edu.au