Future Climate Coral Bank Status report

According to the Fututre Climate Coral Bank Status Report,

"Against this backdrop of major climate-related mass coral mortalities, it is more important than ever to gain a perspective on the changing state of Maldivian reefs. We need answers to questions like what did healthy reefs look like prior to mass bleaching? How serious and widespread were coral mass mortality events?

Were some areas more affected than others, and have some areas recovered better than others?The first phase of the Future Climate Coral Bank project, supported by the Deutsche Bank Ocean Resilience Philanthropy Fund, sought to answer these urgent questions. Building a deeper understanding of the past and present states of Maldivian reefs can enable us to make better preparations for the future.

We have built a historical dataset of coral cover for the Maldives based on all the existing available data we could find in the scientific literature and grey literature reports, including extensive environmental impact assessments. We use the data to describe patterns of change in coral cover in space and time in the Maldives.

By analysing differences in present reef condition and responses to historical bleaching events, our dataset will help us identify resistant reefs (those that lost the least amount of coral during bleaching events), and resilient reefs (those that bounced back the best after bleaching events), and enable us to map patterns of resistance and resilience across the country. Such a map can be used to prioritise management interventions to protect and rehabilitate reefs. It will also facilitate further research into the biological and environmental causes of differences in resistance and resilience, paving the way for Phases II and III of the Future Climate Coral Bank project"