Identifying coastal and marine priority areas for conservation in the United Arab Emirates

Lamine, Emna Ben; Mateos-Molina, Daniel; Antonopoulou, Marina; Burt, John A.; Das, HS; Javed, Saleem; Muzaffar, Sabir Bin; Giakoumi, Sylvaine

doi:10.1007/s10531-020-02007-4

Cited by 27 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Accordingly, the marine protected areas (MPAs) were found to be the most crucial approach to minimizing these impacts. Lamine et al, (2020) adopted coastal and marine key priorities in UAE for marine conservation across multiple planning scenarios that can be applied in the MPAs. Similar findings were highlighted by the State of the Marine Environment Report (SOMER) described by Devlin et al (2019) in Kuwaiti waters.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine biotopes of Askar coastal area, east of Bahrain

Ali

2022

Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine biotopes of Askar coastal area, east of Bahrain

Ali

2022

Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences

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“…While our data did not indicate movements of turtles to other potential green turtle habitat in western Abu Dhabi and the Al Yasat Marine Protected Area, it is likely that this simply reflects the low incidence of multiple foraging habitat use, and it is likely that these waters are also home to substantial numbers of sea turtles, warranting further investigation. While recent work has highlighted the importance of Khor Muzahmi, as it hosts a mosaic of different habitats such as seagrass, mudflats and mangroves supporting rich biodiversity (Lamine et al 2020), and the Bu Tinah foraging area has been well studied (EAD 2007), we recorded a number of foraging areas outside of the protected areas which also warrant further investigation and some degree of management, as these are obviously also of importance to sea turtles. Consistent with the recommendations from our previous study on hawksbill sea turtles (Pilcher et al 2014a), granting formal recognition to these key foraging areas as Important Turtle Areas (ITAs) would provide support for additional protection or conservation efforts and possible extension of the protected area.…”

Section: Foraging Area Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 91%

Movements of green turtles from foraging areas of the United Arab Emirates: regional habitat connectivity and use of marine protected areas

et al. 2021

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Adult sea turtles migrate between foraging areas and nesting sites that may be 100 s–1000 s of km away. Little is known of the connectivity between these sites in the Arabian region for green sea turtles. We document linkages between two foraging areas in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with key nesting sites and provide insights on effectiveness of marine protected areas for green sea turtles. Tracking 45 adult green sea turtles Chelonia mydas from foraging areas in the UAE, we show that the primary nesting destination for turtles foraging in Bu Tinah in the UAE is Ras al Hadd in Oman. The turtles use the waters of the UAE, Iran and Oman during breeding migrations and generally stay ~ 20 km off the coast, in waters 10–20 m deep except when crossing the Sea of Oman. Turtles display substantial fidelity to the original foraging sites, often traversing other known foraging sites when returning from the breeding migration. A small proportion of turtles also utilise more than one foraging site. Our data indicate that the Marawah Marine Biosphere Reserve in Abu Dhabi is broadly coincident with the foraging areas of turtles offering substantial protection from fishery activities and that the marine protected area in Ras Al Khaimah would be more effective in protecting green sea turtles if it extended offshore and along the coast. These data may contribute to targeted and effective national and international management and conservation initiatives in the Arabian region.

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“…The focal area (53,680 km 2 ) was divided into hexagonal planning units of 4 km 2 each. Relatively high spatial resolution of the planning units was possible because of the detailed coastal habitat maps produced by Emirates Nature-WWF (Mateos-Molina et al, 2020;Mateos-Molina et al, 2021a) and the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD, 2018) and a national systematic conservation planning project to identify and map Areas of Particular Importance to Marine Biodiversity (APIMBs) (Ben Lamine et al, 2020). Dubai and UAE's coastline in the Gulf of Oman were outside of the geographical scope due to key spatial data gaps on biodiversity that precluded the application of several essential criteria.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because the focus was on a rapid site-selection process, a full data quality assessment was not conducted. However, the habitat maps and APIMBs and their associated input data underwent an extensive development process that included stakeholder input and validation (Ben Lamine et al, 2020;Mateos-Molina et al, 2020;Mateos-Molina et al, 2021a). Elsewhere we relied primarily on authoritative global datasets and stakeholder knowledge to fill remaining data gaps.…”

Section: Spatial Data Layers As Spatial Proxies For Criteriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid Site Selection to Prioritize Coastal Seascapes for Nature-Based Solutions With Multiple Benefits

Pittman

Stamoulis²,

Antonopoulou³

et al. 2022

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Coastal seascapes are productive and diverse land-sea systems that provide many valuable benefits yet are increasingly threatened by human activity. Scaling up of nature-based solutions (NbS) to effectively protect, sustainably manage, and restore coastal seascapes is urgently required for mitigation of climate change and biodiversity loss while also providing socio-economic benefits. Evidence-based site selection is an important first step to improve the outcomes and avoid negative impacts when prioritizing NbS investments at national level. We developed a spatially explicit, integrative and culturally relevant ecosystem-based site selection process to identify a portfolio of seascapes for NbS consideration in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The primary goal was to rank planning units based on potential for climate change mitigation action, positive impact to biodiversity and socio-economic benefits to people. The multi-criteria site-selection framework provided a rapid, transparent, repeatable and scalable tool. The highest weightings were assigned to blue carbon storage value, biodiversity conservation features, and local stakeholder preferred areas. Spatial proxies for benefits to people were represented by population density and accessibility to coastal seascapes, relative tourism and recreation potential, and importance of fish habitat and fishing grounds for food security. Participatory mapping of local knowledge and review of existing data ensured that both qualitative and quantitative criteria were reliable, up-to-date and locally relevant. Two distinct clusters of high suitability planning units were identified in the Abu Dhabi region and four along the north-western coast of the UAE. Most high suitability sites were located outside of existing marine protected areas. Alternative spatial scenarios without stakeholder bias underscored the suitability of sites identified through participatory mapping and highlighted additional priority sites for future scaling-up of NbS. A spatial corridor of medium and high suitability planning units across the region offers potential for designing well-connected NbS investments to accelerate and boost synergistic outcomes and increase resilience. The site selection framework provides a rapid tool that integrates local and global open access data at a range of scales with great potential for transferability to other regions worldwide.

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Identifying coastal and marine priority areas for conservation in the United Arab Emirates

Cited by 27 publications

References 37 publications

Marine biotopes of Askar coastal area, east of Bahrain

Marine biotopes of Askar coastal area, east of Bahrain

Movements of green turtles from foraging areas of the United Arab Emirates: regional habitat connectivity and use of marine protected areas

Rapid Site Selection to Prioritize Coastal Seascapes for Nature-Based Solutions With Multiple Benefits

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