Pengembangan indeks resiliensi ekosistem dalam pengelolaan terumbu karang

Abstract

Global climate change is predicted to increasingly expose coral reef ecosystem to thermal stress, disturbances, and surprises. Ecological resilience is therefore becoming a very important ecosystem component that needs to be identified in coral reef management. Knowing ecological state of an ecosystem is a first step in planning an ecosystem based management, but practical method to assess ecological resilience of coral reef ecosystem is yet to be available. The existing methods demand to high expertise or high cost that are not available on many districts in Indonesia. The aim of the study was to develop an index for measuring quantitatively ecological resilience of coral reef ecosystem. The index was developed from a soil community resilience index of the Orwin and Wardle, with modification on the reference community and in the number of variables. Instead of using a control community, the coral reef resilience index uses a super or ideal coral reef, i.e. coral reef that has maximum values on all of its indicator variables. More than 2250 data obtained from 10 meter line intercept transect (LIT), all over Indonesia, were extracted to construct the “super” coral reef of Indonesia, as the index reference.

Mengenali kondisi ekosistem merupakan langkah pertama dalam penyusunan rencana pengelolaan. Perubahan iklim global telah diprediksi akan mengakibatkan meningkatnya ancaman kerusakan terhadap ekosistem terumbu karang. Pengelolaan terumbu karang tidak cukup lagi dengan memperbanyak wilayah inti tanpa penangkapan (no-take area), melainkan harus mampu memelihara kemampuan alami terumbu karang untuk pulih dari gangguan, yaitu resiliensi ekosistem. Pada saat ini, metode penilaian resiliensi ekosistem masih dalam tahap awal pengembangan. Teori resiliensi ekosistem sudah lama dikembangkan oleh para peneliti terumbu karang, sejak tahun 1970-an, tetapi penilaian terhadap resiliensi ekosistem masih belum banyak berkembang, sehingga teori resiliensi belum banyak dapat membantu pengelolaan terumbu karang. Pada ekosistem hutan, danau, dan sungai, penggunaan teori resiliensi dalam pengelolaan juga belum berkembang.