TY - JOUR

T1 - A Sustainability Agenda for Tropical Marine Science

AU - Partelow, Stefan

AU - Schlüter, Achim

AU - von Wehrden, Henrik

AU - Jänig, Manuel

AU - Senff, Paula

N1 - Funding Information: The publication of this article was funded by the Open Access Fund of the Leibniz Association. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their efforts to critique and improve earlier versions of this manuscript. Publisher Copyright: Copyright and Photocopying: © 2017 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

PY - 2018/1/1

Y1 - 2018/1/1

N2 - Tropical coasts face unprecedented sustainability challenges for advancing human welfare and maintaining ecosystem functioning and diversity. These coupled social-ecological processes exist within interdependent relationships across multiple levels and scales. Reflection is needed on the knowledge tropical marine science generates to advance a research agenda for sustainability. In this article we systematically review 753 social and natural science articles conducted within the tropical coastal marine sector. Our results are organized in five themes. (1) The spatial distribution and disciplinary composition of research is not homogeneous across regions. (2) A third of all research lacks a stated problem orientation and coral reefs dominate the ecosystem focus. (3) Research is primarily conducted on selected subgroups of levels and scales. (4) The social and natural sciences focus on a varying diversity of system processes that indicate different degrees of inter- and intradisciplinary research. (5) Statistically clustered terminology usage across all articles indicates that distinct research communities exist across a social to natural science gradient. The social and natural sciences generate different types of knowledge associated with terminology at different scales. This analysis attempts to provide a guidepost for discussing the challenges and pathways forward to progress a sustainability agenda in tropical marine science.

AB - Tropical coasts face unprecedented sustainability challenges for advancing human welfare and maintaining ecosystem functioning and diversity. These coupled social-ecological processes exist within interdependent relationships across multiple levels and scales. Reflection is needed on the knowledge tropical marine science generates to advance a research agenda for sustainability. In this article we systematically review 753 social and natural science articles conducted within the tropical coastal marine sector. Our results are organized in five themes. (1) The spatial distribution and disciplinary composition of research is not homogeneous across regions. (2) A third of all research lacks a stated problem orientation and coral reefs dominate the ecosystem focus. (3) Research is primarily conducted on selected subgroups of levels and scales. (4) The social and natural sciences focus on a varying diversity of system processes that indicate different degrees of inter- and intradisciplinary research. (5) Statistically clustered terminology usage across all articles indicates that distinct research communities exist across a social to natural science gradient. The social and natural sciences generate different types of knowledge associated with terminology at different scales. This analysis attempts to provide a guidepost for discussing the challenges and pathways forward to progress a sustainability agenda in tropical marine science.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Coastal

KW - Interdisciplinary

KW - Marine

KW - Social-ecological systems

KW - Systematic review

KW - Tropical

KW - Biology

KW - Ecosystems Research

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013967769&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/b1198198-8ed2-32d2-8da2-99ae38928134/

U2 - 10.1111/conl.12351

DO - 10.1111/conl.12351

M3 - Scientific review articles

AN - SCOPUS:85013967769

VL - 11

JO - Conservation Letters

JF - Conservation Letters

SN - 1755-263X

IS - 1

M1 - e12351

ER -