Alasdair Edwards

Dr Alasdair Edwards

Senior Lecturer, School of Biology

School of Biology
Ridley Building
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU, UK
Tel: +44 (0)191 222 6663
Fax: +44 (0)191 222 5229

Research Interests

Current research focuses on a) spatial and temporal patterns of recovery of coral reefs from physical damage and mass bleaching events, b) how reef restoration technologies can assist natural recovery processes, c) how gear changes and reserves can assist sustainable fisheries development, and d) the systematics and biogeography or reef fish.

Collaborative Research

Current funded projects include:

Developing ubiquitous restoration practices for Indo-Pacific reefs: European Commission funded Framework 6 project led by Prof. Buki Rinkevich, National Institute of Oceanography (Israel), working with Prof. Edgardo Gomez (University of the Philippines, Marine Science Institute). Others partners include Conzorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare (Italy), National University of Singapore and Phuket Marine Biological Center (Thailand).
Developing reserves for biodiversity conservation and sustainable fisheries: a Darwin Initiative project with Shoals Rodrigues funded by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Also involved as UK advisers are Dr Fiona Gell (Isle of Man) and Dr Charles Anderson (The Whale and Dolphin Company.
Coral reef restoration and remediation: this is one of six integrated programmes of research which form part of the GEF/World Bank funded Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management project. Following the Asian tsunami tragedy the Restoration and Remediation Working Group (RRWG) issued an Advisory Brief on reef restoration for governments, agencies and NGOs in the region. In April 2008 we set up an experiment in Palau to look at the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of enhancing larval settlement of reefs.
Published in early 2007, Reef Restoration Concepts & Guidelines: making sensible management choices in the face of uncertainty, provides managers, decision makers and community-based organisations with simple guidance of coral reef restoration do's and don'ts. These are now also available in French, Bahasa Indonesia and Spanish. The research of the RRWG members Alasdair Edwards, Edgardo Gomez (Philippines), James Guest (Singapore), Andrew Heyward (Australia) and Buki Rinkevich (Israel) was recently featured in Science.

Recent funded projects include:

Spatial and temporal patterns of reef recovery from physical damage: NERC Connect B funded project with Dr Susan Clark, Dr Martin LeTissier, Catherine Michael and Dr Stuart Field
Systematics and biogeography of West African shore fishes: Darwin Initiative funded project with Dr Tony Gill, Natural History Museum, London and Parcy Abohweyere, Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, Lagos.

International Collaboration

Prof. Ed Gomez, Marine Science Institute, University of the Philippines - efficacy and cost-effectiveness of reef restoration technologies.

Dr Tony Gill, Arizona State University, USA - systematics and phylogeny of pseudoplesiopine fishes (Teleostei: Pseudochromidae).

Shoals Rodrigues NGO, Mauritius - Developing reserves for biodiversity conservation and sustainable fisheries.

Dr Ross Robertson, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama - systematics and phylogeny of Atlantic and East Pacific Chromis.

Professional Positions

Chair of GEF/World Bank Reef Restoration and Remediation Working Group

Member of International Bilko Executive Steering Team (IBEST) for the UNESCO-Bilko remote sensing distance-learning project.

Invited speaker and international panel member at LEAD (Leadership for Environment and Development) Expert Meeting on the Development of a Field-Survey and Geo-Informatics Training Module for Asian NGOs, Naha, Okinawa, Japan, November 2002.

Guest Editor, Special Issue of Marine Pollution Bulletin on Rehabilitation of Coastal Ecosystems published in 1999

Co-organiser of International Workshop on the Rehabilitation of Degraded Coastal Systems (19-24 January 1998, Phuket, Thailand)

Research Students

Hussein Zahir: Patterns of coral community recovery in Maldives following mass bleaching in 1998.
Anne-Marie Kitchen-Wheeler: The behavioural ecology of the Giant manta (Manta birostris) in the central Maldives atolls.

Teaching

I primarily teach on various modules in the MSc in Tropical Coastal Management, teaching on seagrass ecosystems, use of remote sensing in coastal management, and fisheries management, but also lecture on invertebrate and vertebrate biology to BSc students.

Module Leader and sole lecturer for two Masters courses:
BIO8000: Habitat Mapping and Resource Assessment using Remote Sensing (10 credits) and NAR8009: Mapping and assessment of tropical habitats using remote sensing (15 credits). The latter module is part of the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Ecotourism which is run jointly with Naresuan University, Thailand and also includes teaching inputs from Lund University, Sweden and Colorado State University, USA.

I also teach courses in two other Masters modules: MST8007 (Fisheries Resources Assessment and Management), MST8011 (Critical appraisal of coastal production systems), and in two undergraduate modules: BIO1002 (The Animal Kingdom) and BIO2007 (Vertebrate Biology).

Selected Recent Publications

Graham, N.A.J., McClanahan, T.R., MacNeil, M.A., Wilson, S.K., Polunin, N.V.C., Jennings, J., Chabanet, P., Clark, S., Spalding, M.D., Letourneur, Y., Bigot, L., Galzin, R., Öhman, M.C., Garpe1, K.C., Edwards, A.J. and Sheppard, C.R.C. (2008). Climate warming, marine protected areas and the ocean-scale integrity of coral reef ecosystems. PLoS ONE 3 (8): e3039.

The Telegraph
The Great Beyond (Nature's news blog)
The New Scientist
Reuters

Carpenter, K.E., Abrar, M., Aeby, G., Aronson, R.B., Banks, S., Bruckner, A., Chiriboga, A., Cortés, J., Delbeek, J.C., DeVantier, L., Edgar, G.J., Edwards, A.J., Fenner, D., Guzmán, H.M., Hoeksema, B.W., Hodgson, G., Johan, O., Licuanan, W.Y., Livingstone, S.R., Lovell, E.R., Moore, J.A., Obura, D.O., Ochavillo, D., Polidoro, B.A., Precht, W.F., Quibilan, M.C., Reboton, C., Richards, Z.T., Rogers, A.D., Sanciangco, J., Sheppard, A., Sheppard, C., Smith, J., Stuart, S., Turak, E., Veron, J.E.N., Wallace C., Weil, E. and Wood, E. (2008). One-third of reef-building corals face elevated extinction risk from climate change and local impacts. Science 321: 560-563.

BBC
The Telegraph
The Independent
The Guardian

Hoegh-Guldberg, O., Mumby, P.J., Hooten, A.J., Steneck, R.S., Greenfield, P., Gomez, E., Harvell, D.R., Sale, P.F., Edwards, A.J., Caldeira, K., Knowlton, N. Eakin, C.M., Iglesias-Prieto, R., Muthinga, N., Bradbury, R.H., Dubi, A. and Hatziolos, M.E. (2007). The carbon crisis: coral reefs under rapid climate change and ocean acidification. Science 318: 1737-1742.

USA Today
The Guardian
The World Bank

Floeter, S.R., Rocha, L.A., Robertson, D.R., Joyeux, J.C., Smith-Vaniz, W., Wirtz, P., Edwards, A.J., Barreiros, J.P., Ferreira, C.E.L., Gasparini, C.E.L., Brito, A., Falcón, M., Bowen, B.W. and Bernardi, G. (2008). Atlantic reef fish biogeography and evolution. Journal of Biogeography 35 (1): 22-47.

Edwards, A.J. and Gomez, E.D. (2007). Reef Restoration Concepts & Guidelines: making sensible management choices in the face of uncertainty. Coral Reef Targeted Research & Capacity Building for Management Programme: St Lucia, Australia. iv + 38 pp.

Gill, A.C. and Edwards, A.J. (2006) Lubbockichthys myersi, a new species of dottyback fish from Guam (Pseudochromidae: Pseudoplesiopinae). Zootaxa 1320: 43-48.

Mumby, P.J., Edwards, A.J., Arias-González, J.E., Lindeman, K.C., Blackwell, P.G., Gall, A., Gorczynska, M.I., Harborne, A.R., Pescod, C.L., Renken, H., Wabnitz, C.C.C. and Llewellyn, G. (2004). Mangroves enhance the biomass of coral reef fish communities in the Caribbean. Nature 427: 533-536.

Gill, A.C. and Edwards, A.J. (2003) Pseudoplesiops wassi, new species of pseudoplesiopine dottyback (Teleostei: Pseudochromidae: Pseudoplesiopinae) from the West Pacific. Zootaxa 291: 1-7.

Edwards, A.J., Gill, A.C. and Abohweyere, P.O. (2003) A revision of F.R. Irvine's Ghanaian marine fishes in the collections of The Natural History Museum, London. Journal of Natural History 37 (18): 2213-2267.

Mumby, P.J., Edwards, A.J. (2002) Mapping marine environments with IKONOS imagery: enhanced spatial resolution can deliver greater thematic accuracy. Remote Sensing of Environment 82: 248-257.

Gill, A.C., Edwards, A.J. (2002) Two new species of the Indo-Pacific fish genus Pseudoplesiops (Perciformes, Pseudochromidae, Pseudoplesiopinae). Bulletin of The Natural History Museum, London (Zoology) 68 (1): 19-26.

Mumby, P.J., Chisholm, J.R.M., Edwards, A.J., Clark, C.D., Roark, E.B., Andrefouet, S. and Jaubert, J. (2001). Unprecedented bleaching-induced mortality in Porites spp. at Rangiroa Atoll, French Polynesia. Marine Biology, 139: 183-189.

Edwards, A.J., Clark, S., Zahir, H., Rajasuriya, A., Naseer, A. and Rubens, J. (2001). Coral bleaching and mortality on artificial and natural reefs in Maldives in 1998, sea surface temperature anomalies and initial recovery. Marine Pollution Bulletin 42: 7-15.

Mumby, P.J., Chisholm, J.R.M., Edwards, A.J., Andrefouet, S. and Jaubert, J. (2001). Cloudy weather may have saved Society Island reef corals during the 1998 ENSO event. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 222: 209-216.

Green, E.P., Mumby, P.J., Edwards, A.J. and Clark, C.D. (Ed. Edwards, A.J.) (2000). Remote Sensing Handbook for Tropical Coastal Management. Unesco, Paris. 316 pp.

Edwards, A.J., Field, C.D. and Fortes, M.D. (Eds) (1999). Special Issue: Rehabilitation of Coastal Ecosystems. Marine Pollution Bulletin. 37 (8-12): 371-557

Gill, A.C. and Edwards, A.J. (1999). Monophyly, interrelationships and description of three new genera in the dottyback fish subfamily Pseudoplesiopinae (Teleostei: Perciformes: Pseudochromidae). Records of the Australian Museum, 51: 141-160.

Edwards, A.J. and Clark, S. (1999). Coral transplantation: a useful management tool or misguided meddling? Marine Pollution Bulletin 37: 474-487.

Full list of publications