Herbarium of the Western Indian Ocean Islands: Areas acting as Resource of Biodiversity

Informations

Funding country

France

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

5/1/2007

End date

4/30/2010

Budget

-

Fundings

Organisations

Abstract

The islands in the west of the Indian Ocean benefit from a fundamental and assiduous development of research activities, with strong needs for transfer of knowledge and support for policy-makers and users. Nonetheless the phanerogam meadows are ecosystems that are barely studied on these islands, even though their important role as source of material for neighbouring systems, source of biodiversity or even as pollution buffer has been proved in other regions. Moreover, studies carried out in eastern Africa show a multitude of ecosystem services, which make these plants an important component of local economies. The project, programmed for three years, focuses on showing the stimulant effects of these habitats on the biodiversity and the associated users on the islands, of which some are subject to strong direct and indirect anthropogenic constraints. The work objectives on these plants are divided in four categories: 1/ to characterize their intrinsic biodiversity; 2/ to quantify the anthropogenic impact on the plants (diversity loss, covering) through an approach both spatially comparative (gradient of disturbed areas) and historical (for some islands); 3/ to identify stimulation mechanisms for biodiversity on neighbouring coral systems (biological traits and life history of species, alteration of populations and functional groups); 4/ to quantify, through a sociologic analysis, the ecosystem services and products linked with plants and more generally the reciprocal relationship between Man and plants (including an institutional analysis). The emphasis will be on the biological key groups that are composed of fish and benthic macro-fauna. Using well-tried methods (such as the protocols of the social analysis tested in eastern Africa, by Torre-Castro M.2006), ongoing research programmes (MASMA Great reef of Toliara), accessible data (typologies of marine estuarial habitats, historical biology data) the multidisciplinary teams familiar with the area will accomplish targeted field missions. These will be carried out assuring perfect feasibility facing conditions that might sometimes complicate the execution of complex experimentation that will be done on four islands of the zone (Madagascar, Mayotte, Seychelles, Reunion). The expected outcomes are, in addition to the advancements in terms of fundamental research, the transfer of updated inventories to local actors and the regional and international databases, tools for activity management and help for decision-making, but also the reinforcement of multidisciplinary networks on an Occidental Indian Ocean dimension.