Acessando a resiliência na Área de Proteção Ambiental Costa dos Corais (Nordeste do Brasil) para embasar decisões de manejo

Abstract

Coral reefs are mainly characterized by having one of Earth's greatest biodiversity, as well as being recognized for the provision of vast goods and services. In Brazil, the reefs are distributed over 3,000km along the coast of the country, representing the only reef system in the South Atlantic and being affected by several threats due to the rapid development of coastal areas and high exploitation of its resources. Recognizing when coral reefs are becoming critically fragile is a major challenge, and therefore resilience measures have been considered a strategy to avoid degradation. For this reason, some studies have been developing methodologies using several factors to indicate and calculate reef resilience in order to develop management and conservation strategies. Therefore, it is relevant to study the resilience of coral reefs in Brazil based on their use in order to improve management and monitoring, promoting the reduction of ecosystem degradation and influencing the choice of priority areas for conservation. Along Costa dos Corais Environmental Protection Area, there are several reefs with different intensities of use, including areas of exclusion of use and areas of high intensity of tourist use. In this way, the site allows to analyze the resilience from the comparative point of view between different reef sectors, under their different situations of use and conservation and relating their degree of resilience with the indicators. For this purpose, the resilience factors were selected based on the literature and all indicators were posed as questions. The questions were applied to APACC’s Council to analyze these parameters in APACC’s 21 reefs, about the following sites: Tamandaré (4 reefs), São José da Coroa Grande (3), Maragogi (4), Japaratinga (3), Porto de Pedras (3) and São Miguel dos Milagres (4). The reefs reached a score of 41 for lowest resilience (São Miguel dos Milagres) up to 71 for highest resilience (Maragogi). According to the ranking, the reefs that obtained high (> 62), medium (between 52 and 60) and low resilience (< 51) were identified. The location with the highest amount of reefs with high resilience is in Japaratinga, while the lowest site is in São Miguel dos Milagres. It is also possible to observe that the reefs that obtained higher scores are located in areas restricted to the use, while those that are present in Visitation Zones obtained lower scores, representing about 66% of the reefs considered with low resilience. With the exception of Piscina de São Miguel dos Milagres, all Marine Life Protection Zones were considered areas of high resilience. Overall, our results show that the management of APA Costa dos Corais has been successful in selecting closed areas, since they have high resilience, with the exception of the only Marine Protection Zone in São Miguel dos Milagres. However, some indicators of resilience can be improved with management actions.