Peter Mumby, Ph.D.

Research

Peter Mumby is a professor at Australia’s University of Queensland and a coral reef ecologist working on pure and applied aspects of reef science and management. His research interests include the measurement of resilience, trophic cascades, reef fisheries impacts and management, marine protected area design under climate change, reef function, and quantifying ecosystem services. Mumby’s Pew fellowship project focused on the concept of “managing reefs for resilience” by demonstrating how the resilience of ecosystems can be modeled across seascapes and then integrated explicitly into a marine reserve network. Models played an important role in synthesizing available scientific knowledge and using it to answer practical questions. Mumby’s approach integrated traditionally separate geographic datasets such as hurricane risk, coral bleaching risk, larval connectivity, and pollution. With his Pew fellowship, Mumby developed means of mapping resilience throughout a seascape. Ecological models will be used to integrate relevant geographic datasets, including current reef state, risk of hurricane disturbance, risk of coral bleaching, acclimation of corals to thermal stress, sources of nutrient runoff, relative fishing intensity (for herbivores), levels of benthic primary production, and the output from Global Climate Models. To learn more about Mumby, visit his bio online: http://www.marinespatialecologylab.org/people/peter-mumby.