Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer.
In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Coral reef ecosystems are being fundamentally restructured by local human impacts and climate-driven marine heatwaves that trigger mass coral bleaching and mortality 1.
Reducing local impacts can increase reef resistance to and recovery from bleaching 2. However, resource managers lack clear advice on targeted actions that best support coral reefs under climate change 3 and sector-based governance means most land- and sea-based management efforts remain siloed 4. Reefs with increased herbivorous fish populations and reduced land-based impacts, such as wastewater pollution and urban runoff, had positive coral cover trajectories predisturbance.
These reefs also experienced a modest reduction in coral mortality following severe heat stress compared to reefs with reduced fish populations and enhanced land-based impacts. Our results reveal that integrated land—sea management could help achieve coastal ocean conservation goals and provide coral reefs with the best opportunity to persist in our changing climate.
Coastal areas contain some of the most biologically diverse and productive marine ecosystems on Earth 6. Coastal areas are also affected by stronger and more frequent disturbances fuelled by human-induced climate change 9. Land-based stressors, such as wastewater pollution, combine with sea-based stressors, such as overfishing, to disrupt natural ecological feedbacks on reefs Corals are further stressed by prolonged periods of anomalously warm ocean temperatures, known as marine heatwaves 12 , that can cause mass coral bleaching 13 and mortality and fundamentally transform reef assemblages 14 , Reducing human impacts on local scales to maintain ecosystem integrity has been the guiding model of coral reef conservation for decades 3.
