↓ Skip to main content

Vulnerability of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change and local pressures

Overview of attention for article published in Global Change Biology, February 2018
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (93rd percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (68th percentile)

Mentioned by

blogs
1 blog
twitter
34 X users
facebook
6 Facebook pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
92 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
271 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Vulnerability of the Great Barrier Reef to climate change and local pressures
Published in
Global Change Biology, February 2018
DOI 10.1111/gcb.14043
Pubmed ID
Authors

Nicholas H. Wolff, Peter J. Mumby, Michelle Devlin, Kenneth R. N. Anthony

Abstract

Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is under pressure from a suite of stressors including cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), nutrients from river run-off and warming events that drive mass coral bleaching. Two key questions are: how vulnerable will the GBR be to future environmental scenarios, and to what extent can local management actions lower vulnerability in the face of climate change? To address these questions, we use a simple empirical and mechanistic coral model to explore six scenarios that represent plausible combinations of climate change projections (from four Representative Concentration Pathways, RCPs), cyclones and local stressors. Projections (2017-2050) indicate significant potential for coral recovery in the near-term, relative to current state, followed by climate-driven decline. Under a scenario of unmitigated emissions (RCP8.5) and business-as-usual management of local stressors, mean coral cover on the GBR is predicted to recover over the next decade and then rapidly decline to only 3% by year 2050. In contrast, a scenario of strong carbon mitigation (RCP2.6) and improved water quality, predicts significant coral recovery over the next two decades, followed by a relatively modest climate-driven decline that sustained coral cover above 26% by 2050. In an analysis of the impacts of cumulative stressors on coral cover relative to potential coral cover in the absence of such impacts, we found that GBR-wide reef performance will decline 27%-74% depending on the scenario. Up to 66% of performance loss is attributable to local stressors. The potential for management to reduce vulnerability, measured here as the mean number of years coral cover can be kept above 30%, is spatially variable. Management strategies that alleviate cumulative impacts have the potential to reduce the vulnerability of some midshelf reefs in the central GBR by 83%, but only if combined with strong mitigation of carbon emissions.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 34 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 271 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 271 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 52 19%
Student > Master 41 15%
Student > Ph. D. Student 40 15%
Researcher 32 12%
Other 9 3%
Other 26 10%
Unknown 71 26%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Environmental Science 77 28%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 59 22%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 16 6%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 12 4%
Social Sciences 6 2%
Other 25 9%
Unknown 76 28%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 32. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 January 2021.
All research outputs
#1,218,430
of 25,083,571 outputs
Outputs from Global Change Biology
#1,496
of 6,250 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#28,995
of 450,694 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Global Change Biology
#35
of 109 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,083,571 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,250 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 35.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 450,694 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 109 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its contemporaries.