Climate change is considered as the greatest long-term threat to the coral reefs. The establishment of no-take marine reserves is one of the proposed solutions to improve the resistance of coral reefs to the effects of climate change such as bleaching.
But in order to maximize the use of financial and technical resources in such management intervention, it is important to first determine which sites have potentials for resiliency to climate change. In this paper, we utilized a framework to assess the resilience of 18 sites (nine existing marine reserves and nine proposed reserve sites) in the Visayan Sea, Asid Gulf, Masbate Pass and Ticao Pass in central Philippines.
Of the 18 sites, four (all existing marine reserves) were rated highly resilient, 12 moderately resilient, and two hardly or not resilient to the effects of climate change.
Assessment of the Resilience to Climate Change - Table
Key words: coral reef, resilience, marine reserves, Masbate, Ticao, Asid Gulf, Visayan Sea
