Assistant Research Professor Katie Cramer, an expert in coral reef conservation, led a team of Conservation Innovation Lab students to publish an article on coral reef ecosystem services in Elsevier, as part of Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation.
Coral reef ecosystems are among the most imperiled globally from human impacts. Although the ecological and socioeconomic importance of coral reefs has been relatively well-documented, the impacts of coral reef degradation on ecosystem service provisioning are less known. For this manuscript, they reviewed the range of ecosystem services currently provided by reefs (provisioning, regulating, and cultural), the human activities that threaten these services, and the future prospects of reef ecosystem services given the projected combined effects of local human disturbances and climate change. They then proposed promising policy and management interventions to promote the maintenance of key coral reef ecosystem services into the future.