Closing Loopholes: Getting Illegal Fishing Under Control

Decreasing numbers of fish caught in global fisheries, overcapacity of fishing fleets, and rising demand for fish heighten the negative impacts of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing an[...]

Creation of a High Spatio-temporal Resolution Global Database of Continuous Mangrove Forest Cover for the 21st Century

Global mangrove deforestation continues but at a much reduced rate of between 0.16% and 0.39% per year. Southeast Asia is a region of concern with mangrove deforestation rates between 3.58% and 8.08%,[...]

Seagrass Community Metabolism: Assessing the carbon sink capacity of seagrass meadows

The metabolic rates of seagrass communities were synthesized on the basis of a data set on seagrass community metabolism containing 403 individual estimates derived from a total of 155 different sites[...]

The Global Flood Protection Benefits of Mangroves

Coastal flood risks are rising rapidly. Authors provide high resolution estimates of the economic value of mangroves forests for flood risk reduction every 20 km worldwide. Authors develop a probabi[...]

A Review of Seagrass Economic Valuations: Gaps and progress in valuation approaches

Multiple studies have documented the ecologically important role that seagrasses play in estuarine and marine ecosystems. Unfortunately, economic valuations of these systems have not been as widesprea[...]

The Protective Role of Coastal Marshes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Saltmarshes lie between many human communities and the coast and have been presumed to protect these communities from coastal hazards by providing important ecosystem services. However, previous chara[...]

Seagrass ecosystems as a globally significant carbon stock

The protection of organic carbon stored in forests is considered as an important method for mitigating climate change. Like terrestrial ecosystems, coastal ecosystems store large amounts of carbon, an[...]

Connecting to the oceans

Improved public understanding of the ocean and the importance of sustainable ocean use, or ocean literacy, is essential for achieving global commitments to sustainable development by 2030 and beyond. [...]