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The loss and degradation of mangrove forests have triggered global restoration efforts to support biodiversity and ecosystem services, including fish stock enhancement. As mangrove restoration accelerates, it is important to evaluate outcomes for species that play functional roles in ecosystems and support services, yet this remains a clear knowledge gap. There is remarkably little information, for example, about how fish use of mangroves varies as restored vegetation matures, hampering efforts to include fisheries benefits in natural capital assessments of restoration. We used unbaited underwater cameras within two distinct zones of mangrove forests—fringe and interior—at five pairs of restored‐natural mangrove sites of increasing age from restoration in southeast Queensland, Australia. We used deep learning to automatically extract data for the four most common species: yellowfin bream (Acanthopagrus australis), sea mullet (Mugil cephalus), common toadfish (Tetractenos hamiltoni), and common silverbiddy (Gerres subfasciatus). The abundance of these species varied among sites and zones, but was equal or greater in restored sites compared to paired natural sites. Despite younger restored sites having dramatically lower structural vegetation complexity, abundances did not increase with restoration site maturity. Furthermore, while yellowfin bream and sea mullet were more abundant in the fringe zone, we observed similarities in how fish used fringe and interior zones across all sites. Our paired, space‐for‐time design provides a powerful test of restoration outcomes for fish, highlighting that even newly restored sites with immature vegetation are readily utilized by key fish species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As efforts to restore coastal habitats accelerate, it is critical that investments are targeted to most effectively mitigate and reverse habitat loss and its impacts on biodiversity. One likely but largely overlooked impediment to effective restoration of habitat-forming organisms is failing to explicitly consider non-habitat-forming animals in restoration planning, implementation, and monitoring. These animals can greatly enhance or degrade ecosystem function, persistence, and resilience. Bivalves, for instance, can reduce sulfide stress in seagrass habitats and increase drought tolerance of saltmarsh vegetation, whereas megaherbivores can detrimentally overgraze seagrass or improve seagrass seed germination, depending on the context. Therefore, understanding when, why, and how to directly manipulate or support animals can enhance coastal restoration outcomes. In support of this expanded restoration approach, we provide a conceptual framework, incorporating lessons from structured decision-making, and describe potential actions that could lead to better restoration outcomes using case studies to illustrate practical approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with an approximation scheme for rate-independent systems governed by a non-smooth dissipation and a possibly non-convex energy functional. The scheme is based on the local minimization scheme introduced in Efendiev and Mielke [J. Convex Anal. 13 (2006) 151–167], but relies on local stationarity of the underlying minimization problem. Under the assumption of Mosco-convergence for the dissipation functional, we show that accumulation points exist and are so-called parametrized BV-solutions of the rate-independent system. In particular, this guarantees the existence of parametrized BV-solutions for a rather general setting. Afterwards, we apply the scheme to a model for the evolution of damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Coordinated conservation requires clear indicator interrelationships. • We analyse and interrogate global ecosystem indicators for coastal wetlands. • We develop spatially explicit typologies of ecosystem status at the global scale. • Typologies identify diverse conservation and management needs of coastal wetlands. • Simplifying the complex global mosaic of status informs management and conservation. Global-scale conservation initiatives and policy instruments rely on ecosystem indicators to track progress towards targets and objectives. A deeper understanding of indicator interrelationships would benefit these efforts and help characterize ecosystem status. We study interrelationships among 34 indicators for mangroves, saltmarsh, and seagrass ecosystems, and develop data-driven, spatially explicit typologies of coastal wetland status at a global scale. After accounting for environmental covariates and gap-filling missing data, we obtained two levels of clustering at 5 and 18 typologies, providing outputs at different scales for different end users. We generated 2,845 cells (1° (lat) × 1° (long)) globally, of which 29.7% were characterized by high land- and marine-based impacts and a high proportion of threatened species, 13.5% by high climate-based impacts, and 9.6% were refuges with lower impacts, high fish density and a low proportion of threatened species. We identify instances where specific actions could have positive outcomes for coastal wetlands across regions facing similar issues. For example, land- and marine-based threats to coastal wetlands were associated with ecological structure and function indicators, suggesting that reducing these threats may reduce habitat degradation and threats to species persistence. However, several interdimensional relationships might be affected by temporal or spatial mismatches in data. Weak relationships mean that global biodiversity maps that categorize areas by single indicators (such as threats or trends in habitat size) may not be representative of changes in other indicators (e.g., ecosystem function). By simplifying the complex global mosaic of coastal wetland status and identifying regions with similar issues that could benefit from knowledge exchange across national boundaries, we help set the scene for globally and regionally coordinated conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofouling of ship hulls is one of the most important vectors for the transfer of aquatic invasive species. These species cause widespread impacts to native environments and ecological communities, in addition to imposing financial costs for industry. Targeted surveillance and effective adaptive management require knowledge on the likelihood of new introductions of non-indigenous species (NIS). We develop a model of the likelihood of introduction and invasion of NIS for the port of Arzew (Algeria), based on the length of stay of vessels in the ports of call, the latitude of these ports, the geographical distance from the port of Arzew, ship's speed, effectiveness of the antifouling system and antifouling strategy used in port of origin. We identified areas that represent a source of high risk species invasion, according to the environmental similarity of the ports of origin with the Arzew port using the Mahalanobis distance. We show that over one year, 738 trips have been made at the port of Arzew, inflicting a very high risk of invasion, in particular from six coastal ecoregions, (the Western Mediterranean ecoregion, the Northern and Central Red Sea, the South European Atlantic Shelf, the Ionian Sea ecoregion, the North Sea, and the Aegean Sea). These results can be used for invasive species management purposes, such as: the application of specific regulations to high-risk vessels and ports in order to minimize the transfer of these species. The methods and models developed here are transferable to any region around the world with similar data availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The condition of fish relates to their energy reserves, and a suite of proxies exist to approximate condition, including biochemical and morphometric indices. Biochemical indices directly measure energy stores but are expensive and sometimes lethal. Morphometrics offer several advantages, but their utility as condition proxies is debated and largely untested experimentally. Here, we manipulated the condition of yellowfin bream (Acanthopagrus australis, Günther, 1859) via food reduction to simulate the effect of poor habitat quality and calculated a variety of condition indices through time. We measured four non‐lethal morphometrics (Fulton's K, Le Cren's relative condition, width‐to‐length ratio and girth), the hepatosomatic index and a biochemical benchmark (liver lipid content). Girth and width‐to‐length ratio were reasonably well correlated with lipid content (R2 = 0.74 and 0.56, respectively). The hepatosomatic index was only weakly or uncorrelated to other indices, including lipid content (R2 = 0.35). Where precise estimates of body condition are not needed or repeat measures on the same individual are useful, non‐lethal morphometrics provide a fast, cheap and non‐lethal alternative to biochemical and lethal morphometric methods for this species. We finish by outlining how artificial intelligence‐based automation can be combined with morphometrics to further enhance ethical monitoring by eliminating the need to capture and handle fish entirely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystems remain under enormous pressure from multiple anthropogenic stressors. Manipulative experiments evaluating stressor interactions and impacts mostly apply stressors under static conditions without considering how variable stressor intensity (i.e. fluctuations) and synchronicity (i.e. timing of fluctuations) affect biological responses. We ask how variable stressor intensity and synchronicity, and interaction type, can influence how multiple stressors affect seagrass. At the highest intensities, fluctuating stressors applied asynchronously reduced seagrass biomass 36% more than for static stressors, yet no such difference occurred for photosynthetic capacity. Testing three separate hypotheses to predict underlying drivers of differences in biological responses highlighted alternative modes of action dependent on how stressors fluctuated over time. Given that environmental conditions are constantly changing, assessing static stressors may lead to inaccurate predictions of cumulative effects. Translating multiple stressor experiments to the real world, therefore, requires considering variability in stressor intensity and the synchronicity of fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting the impacts of multiple stressors is important for informing ecosystem management but is impeded by a lack of a general framework for predicting whether stressors interact synergistically, additively or antagonistically. Here, we use process‐based models to study how interactions generalise across three levels of biological organisation (physiological, population and consumer‐resource) for a two‐stressor experiment on a seagrass model system. We found that the same underlying processes could result in synergistic, additive or antagonistic interactions, with interaction type depending on initial conditions, experiment duration, stressor dynamics and consumer presence. Our results help explain why meta‐analyses of multiple stressor experimental results have struggled to identify predictors of consistently non‐additive interactions in the natural environment. Experiments run over extended temporal scales, with treatments across gradients of stressor magnitude, are needed to identify the processes that underpin how stressors interact and provide useful predictions to management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enable the evaluation of water treatment efficiency of electrochemical advanced oxidation processes (EAOPs), an approach to remove H2O2 as a catalytic pretreatment was investigated to avoid interference in chemical oxygen demand (COD) measurements. Four wastewater types with COD and H2O2 concentrations up to 1,300 mg/L and 90 mmol/L , respectively, were investigated with a novel method. The method requires the addition of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3), which decomposes H2O2 at ambient temperature within 24 h without changing COD. For synthetic wastewater (SWW), this time is reduced to 1 h by heating at 70°C. A side-by-side comparison of NaHCO3 and Na2CO3 experiments confirmed H2O2 removal without changes in COD via NaHCO3 , whereas a ∼20% decrease in original COD was observed using Na2CO3. The change in COD during catalytical H2O2 decomposition in Na2CO3 solution was highly correlated with the high pH value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seagrass meadows are threatened by multiple pressures, jeopardizing the many benefits they provide to humanity and biodiversity, including climate regulation and food provision through fisheries production. Conservation of seagrass requires identification of the main pressures contributing to loss and the regions most at risk of ongoing loss. Here, we model trajectories of seagrass change at the global scale and show they are related to multiple anthropogenic pressures but that trajectories vary widely with seagrass life-history strategies. Rapidly declining trajectories of seagrass meadow extent (>25% loss from 2000 to 2010) were most strongly associated with high pressures from destructive demersal fishing and poor water quality. Conversely, seagrass meadow extent was more likely to be increasing when these two pressures were low. Meadows dominated by seagrasses with persistent life-history strategies tended to have slowly changing or stable trajectories, while those with opportunistic species were more variable, with a higher probability of either rapidly declining or rapidly increasing. Global predictions of regions most at risk for decline show high-risk areas in Europe, North America, Japan, and southeast Asia, including places where comprehensive long-term monitoring data are lacking. Our results highlight where seagrass loss may be occurring unnoticed and where urgent conservation interventions are required to reverse loss and sustain their essential services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an urgent need to halt and reverse loss of mangroves and seagrass to protect and increase the ecosystem services they provide to coastal communities, such as enhancing coastal resilience and contributing to climate stability. 1,2 Ambitious targets for their recovery can inspire public and private investment in conservation, 3 but the expected outcomes of different protection and restoration strategies are unclear. We estimated potential recovery of mangroves and seagrass through gains in ecosystem extent to the year 2070 under a range of protection and restoration strategies implemented until the year 2050. Under a protection-only scenario, the current trajectories of net mangrove loss slowed, and a minor net gain in global seagrass extent (∼1%) was estimated. Protection alone is therefore unlikely to drive sufficient recovery. However, if action is taken to both protect and restore, net gains of up to 5% and 35% of mangroves and seagrasses, respectively, could be achieved by 2050. Further, protection and restoration can be complementary, as protection prevents losses that would otherwise occur post-2050, highlighting the importance of implementing protection measures. Our findings provide the scientific evidence required for setting strategic and ambitious targets to inspire significant global investment and effort in mangrove and seagrass conservation. • We estimated potential global recovery of mangroves and seagrass • Protection reduces net losses and supports long-term recovery • Restoration is critical to achieve net gains in ecosystem extent • Both protection and restoration are required to achieve and sustain global recovery Conservation action is needed to maintain and recover mangrove and seagrass ecosystems world-wide. Scenario-based models can inform ambitious and achievable global targets for coordinated action. Buelow et al. demonstrate that only protection and restoration combined can support substantial gains in mangrove and seagrass extent into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Global ecosystem assessments inform conservation funding priorities. • Seagrass, saltmarsh and mangroves are under-recognized in global assessments. • Ecosystem assessments often overlook important functions, like fishery nurseries. • Synthesis could fill gaps in data for global scale assessments. • We recommend priorities for filling gaps in global assessments. Vegetated coastal wetlands, including seagrass, saltmarsh and mangroves, are threatened globally, yet the need to avert these losses is poorly recognized in international policy, such as in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals. Identifying the impact of overlooking coastal wetlands in ecosystem assessment frameworks could help prioritize research efforts to fill these gaps. Here, we examine gaps in the recognition of coastal wetlands in globally applicable ecosystem assessments. We address both shortfalls in assessment frameworks when it comes to assessing wetlands, and gaps in data that limit widespread application of assessments. We examine five assessment frameworks that track fisheries, greenhouse gas emissions, ecosystem threats, and ecosystem services. We found that these assessments inform management decisions, but that the functions provided by coastal wetlands are incompletely represented. Most frameworks had sufficient complexity to measure wetland status, but limitations in data meant they were incompletely informed about wetland functions and services. Incomplete representation of coastal wetlands may lead to them being overlooked by research and management. Improving the coverage of coastal wetlands in ecosystem assessments requires improving global scale mapping of wetland trends, developing global-scale indicators of wetland function and synthesis to quantitatively link animal population dynamics to wetland trends. Filling these gaps will help ensure coastal wetland conservation is properly informed to manage them for the outstanding benefits they bring humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]