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The Role of Vegetated Coastal Wetlands for Marine Megafauna Conservation

TLDR
It is concluded that coastal wetlands require greater protection to support marine megafauna, and a simple, effective framework to improve the inclusion of habitat associations within species assessments is presented.
Abstract
Habitat loss is accelerating a global extinction crisis. Conservation requires understanding links between species and habitats. Emerging research is revealing important associations between vegetated coastal wetlands and marine megafauna, such as cetaceans, sea turtles, and sharks. But these links have not been reviewed and the importance of these globally declining habitats is undervalued. Here, we identify associations for 102 marine megafauna species that utilize these habitats, increasing the number of species with associations based on current International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) species assessments by 59% to 174, accounting for over 13% of all marine megafauna. We conclude that coastal wetlands require greater protection to support marine megafauna, and present a simple, effective framework to improve the inclusion of habitat associations within species assessments.

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Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae

J. Emmett Duffy, +51 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a consensus assessment and recommendations on the current state of and opportunities for advancing global marine macrophyte observations, integrating contributions from a community of researchers with broad geographic and disciplinary expertise.
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Mapping the deforestation footprint of nations reveals growing threat to tropical forests.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors quantify and map the spatiotemporal changes in global deforestation footprints over 15 years (2001-2015) at a 30-m resolution and find that while many developed countries, China and India have obtained net forest gains domestically, they have also increased the deforestation embodied in their imports, of which tropical forests are the most threatened biome.
Journal ArticleDOI

Automating the Analysis of Fish Abundance Using Object Detection: Optimizing Animal Ecology With Deep Learning

TL;DR: Deep learning methods provide a faster, cheaper, and more accurate alternative to manual data analysis methods currently used to monitor and assess animal abundance and have much to offer the field of aquatic ecology.
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Species-specific plastic accumulation in the sediment and canopy of coastal vegetated habitats.

TL;DR: Overall, the trapping capacity of microplastics in the sediment and on the canopy was higher for subtidal than for intertidal vegetated habitats, and generalizations in the trapping effect of coastal vegetated areas should be done with caution.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities

TL;DR: A ‘silver bullet’ strategy on the part of conservation planners, focusing on ‘biodiversity hotspots’ where exceptional concentrations of endemic species are undergoing exceptional loss of habitat, is proposed.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World’s Vertebrates

Michael R. Hoffmann, +173 more
- 10 Dec 2010 - 
TL;DR: Though the threat of extinction is increasing, overall declines would have been worse in the absence of conservation, and current conservation efforts remain insufficient to offset the main drivers of biodiversity loss in these groups.
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How much wetland has the world lost? Long-term and recent trends in global wetland area

TL;DR: It is found that the reported long-term loss of natural wetlands averages between 54–57% but loss may have been as high as 87% since 1700 AD, and there has been a much faster rate of wetland loss during the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Journal ArticleDOI

Cascading effects of the loss of apex predatory sharks from a coastal ocean.

TL;DR: For example, this paper found that the abundance of all 11 great sharks that consume other elasmobranchs (rays, skates, and small sharks) fell over the past 35 years, while 12 of 14 of these prey species increased in coastal northwest Atlantic ecosystems.
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