More intense severe tropical cyclones in recent decades cause greater impacts on mangroves bordering Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

Other Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Duke, Norman C.;Canning, Adam D.;Mackenzie, Jock R.
Abstract

A number of published articles about the environmental impacts of climate change indicate that mangrove habitats are prone to greater damage from increasingly more intense tropical cyclones in recent decades. We reviewed such concerns by investigating the impacts of severe tropical cyclones (STCs) on shoreline mangroves bordering Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Specifically, we considered the STCs having crossed the coastline during the last half century. There were 11 between 1987 and 2020. Available satellite data were used to quantify the extent and severity of damage to mangroves for each event, along with an appraisal of recovery. There were several significant findings. Firstly, we found that STC events had occurred widely across the GBR area from Torres Strait to the Tropic of Capricorn. Secondly, we observed notable increases in both the number and intensity of STCs. This was especially notable in the recent decade (2010-2019) with 7 in that decade, compared to the 0-2 per decade recorded earlier. This observation was significant because the damage to shoreline mangroves had increased markedly in unison with the increased intensity of recent STCs. We also observed some sites suffered repeated impacts from 2-3 STCs during the study period. These impacts were accumulative, further delaying and disrupting recovery. While natural recovery was shown to be efficient, the innate processes involved meant that it was linear taking set amounts of time. This situation presents natural resource managers with a well-known paradoxical dilemma of how to sustain natural ecosystems faced with unprecedented, ever-increasing external pressures? It seems the longer-term survival of mangrove ecosystems in the GBR area are becoming more dependent on adaptive management requiring threat minimisation whilst finding more effective ways to strengthen their resilience. In view of the rapidly changing environmental conditions, this study has demonstrated the considerable insights to be drawn from monitoring these valued coastal marine resources and one of the dominant driving processes.

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Coral Reefs: Physical and Biological Links in the Great Barrier Reef

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ISBN/ISSN

9781003320425

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Pages Count

28

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CRC Press

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Boca Raton, Florida, USA

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DOI

10.1201/9781003320425-18