Western Indian Ocean coral and fish normalized site richness collected between 1991 to 2000

Aim: Strong social-ecological trade-offs between resource extraction and protection have created challenges for large, protected area management in natural-resource-dependent countries. Therefore, local governments and community conservation activities are becoming common and need information about low environmental exposure and high biodiversity for planning localized conservation activities.
Location: the western Indian Ocean
Methods: Coral reef sites were evaluated for local scale environmental and species richness to elucidate local patterns in spatial heterogeneity. Local coral and fish taxonomic richness were normalized to partially account for common and heterogeneous disturbances to coral cover and fish biomass. Residuals were evaluated for patterns of local diversity with geography, environmental stress, and by machine learning to evaluate the relationship with 21 specific environmental variables.
Results: High variability in richness was found at similar latitudes where richne..., Field study sites were undertaken in 4 ecoregions and 7 countries that ranged in latitude from 2.04°S (Kenya) to 26.08°S (Mozambique) and longitudes of 32.96°E (Mozambique) to 57.71°E in (Mauritius). Sites were located on the windward and leeward sides of coral reefs in depths from 1.5 to 20 meters depth at low tide (the region’s tidal range is ~1 to 4 meters). Sites were all located on calcium carbonate coral bottoms colonized by hard and soft corals and various algae, with sand and seagrass being a smaller portion of the benthic cover (McClanahan & Muthiga 2016). Sites were distributed among four fisheries management categories, namely, high compliance reserves (no-take closures), low compliance reserves, and restricted and unrestricted fishing, as previously described (McClanahan et al. 2015). Low compliance closures were areas legally gazetted as marine reserves but where fishing was evident by personal observations or reports in the literature. Restricted fishing locations had ..., , # Western Indian Ocean coral and fish normalized site richness

This readme file was generated on 2022-07-17 by Tim McClanahan

GENERAL INFORMATION

 

1.     Title of Dataset: WIO Coral and fish normalized site richness collected from 1991 to 2020

2.     Author Information 

Name: Tim McClanahan

ORCID:

Institution: Wildlife Conservation Society

Address: 2300 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, New York, 10460, United States

Email:

 

3.     Geographic location of data collection: Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte and, Comoros

4.     Funding sources that supported the collection of the data: Marine Science for Management (MASMA) programme of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Mozambique country program, Sustainable Poverty Alleviation from Coastal Ecosystem Services (SPACES) project NE-K010484-1′, funded by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty...