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Assessing recovery potential of coral reefs in Madagascar and the effects of marine protected areas

As with most of the world's coral reefs, those in Madagascar have been impacted by both large-scale and locally-induced disturbances, including coral bleaching, overfishing, pollution and more.

Faced with the decline of these reefs, Marine Protected Areas have been created for almost 50 years to support and increase their resilience. The idea is that by reducing or mitigating human disturbance, coral reefs are more likely to resist and recover from climatic and natural stresses. But assessing this resilience, and subsequently knowing the effects that management tools (such as MPAs) can have on this highly dynamic ecosystem, is sometimes complicated.

In this article, a multi-criteria decision-support method, based on criteria intrinsic (coral diversity, density and cover, algal cover, herbivorous fish biomass) and extrinsic (temperature anomalies) to the reefs, was used to assess the reef resilience and reserve effect of the MPAs found at Masoala, Nosy-Be and Salary Avaratra. Using these biophysical criteria and the resulting resilience indices, the reef sites will be ranked according to their potential. The reefs at Masoala were found to be the most resilient, followed by those at Nosy-Be and Salary Avaratra. This finding is linked to the low occurrence of temperature anomalies on Madagascar's east coast, unlike the reefs to the west, which are more affected by coral bleaching and human disturbance. This study also showed that only the MPAs at Nosy-Be have a positive effect on coral assemblages, hypothetically linked to their age and small size, which makes them easy to manage.

This assessment tool, easily accessible to MPA managers, has already been used on reefs in the Mascareignes and the Eparses Islands. With data from the ecological monitoring that WWF Madagascar carries out periodically on its Priority Landscapes, it would be possible to evaluate the management efforts undertaken over the last ten years in the same way.

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