Reef Grief: investigating the relationship between place meanings and place change on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

International audience; It is well established that ecosystems bring meaning and well-being to individuals, often articulated through attachment toplace. Degradation and threats to places and ecosystems have been shown to lead to loss of well-being. Here, we suggestthat the interactions between ecosystem loss and declining well-being may involve both emotional responses associated withgrief, and with observable impacts on mental health. We test these ideas on so-called ecological grief by examining individualemotional response to well-documented and publicized ecological degradation: coral bleaching and mortality in the GreatBarrier Reef ecosystem. The study focuses both on one off events of coral loss and the prospect of continuing decline on theself-reported well-being of residents living within the ecosystem, visitors, and those whose livelihood is dependent on themarine resource: data from face-to-face surveys of 1870 local residents, 1804 tourists, and telephone surveys of 91 fishersand 94 tourism operators. We hypothesise that the extent to which individuals experience ecological grief is dependent onthe meanings or intrinsic values (such as aesthetic, scientific, or biodiversity-based values), and is moderated by their placeattachment, place identity, lifestyle dependence, place-based pride, and derived well-being. Results show that around halfof residents, tourists and tourist operators surveyed, and almost one quarter of fishers, report significant Reef Grief. ReefGrief is closely and positively associated with place meanings within resident and tourist populations. By contrast respond-ents who rated high aesthetic value of the coral ecosystem report lower levels of Reef Grief. These findings have significantimplications for how individuals and populations experience ecosystem decline and loss within places that are meaningfulto them. Given inevitable cumulative future impacts on ecosystems from committed climate change impacts, understand-ing and managing ecological grief will become increasingly important. This study seeks to lay conceptual and theoreticalfoundations to identify how ecological grief is manifest and related to meaningful places and the social distribution of suchgrief across society.