New tool helps restore marine ecosystems.

A research team at Flinders University in Australia has just published a new online tool to assist marine managers and experts in enhancing the resilience of marine habitat-forming species.

'Reef Adapt' leverages genetic data from a wide variety of marine organisms, including the corals that form major reefs and the kelp that form habitats, but with the scope extending to other species, mapping areas likely to foster populations adapted to current and future environmental conditions.

This innovative web platform is designed to quickly integrate genetic, biophysical, and environmental data into marine restoration planning and conservation initiatives.

The tool provides users with maps identifying areas with populations suitable for specific restoration sites under current and future climate scenarios. Initially, the platform will store data on 27 species collected from 420 sampling sites globally. Users can also upload personal data to the website, contributing to the conservation of other species and areas.

Although guidelines exist for seed stocks that restore terrestrial ecosystems, such as the US National Seed Strategy and Australia's Florabank, 'Reef Adapt' is one of the first seed stock restoration tools specifically for marine environments.

This project follows similar projects on the mainland, such as Australia’s NSW Recovery and Innovation programme, aimed at removing barriers to access to genetic data and improving supported recovery and gene flow.

According to the study's authors, global efforts to restore ecosystems are being actively promoted, including the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity through the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to bring 30% of degraded ecosystems into effective restoration by 2030.

The 'Reef Adapt' platform stores crucial genetic information for government , non-profit, and community organizations – removing barriers to accessing vital information that the research team hopes will improve both immediate and long-term recovery outcomes.

Developing this tool required collecting nearly 10,000 reference data points from published population genetics literature, as well as a dataset of environmental data and oceanographic models.

Source: https://www.mard.gov.vn/Pages/cong-cu-moi-giup-khoi-phuc-he-sinh-thai-bien.aspx?item=4