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Description:
Project Manager:
Thomas Oliver
Project Years:
2021
2022
2023
Project Summary:
While none of these projects is a standard multi-factor 'vulnerability' spatial pattern assessment (sensu MacClanahan et al 2012), each delves deeper into the processes resulting in realized resilience by documenting temporal trends in ecologically relevant response variables (coral cover, juvenile density, reef 3D structure), highlighting spatial distinctions in these trends, and attempting to attribute these spatial distinctions to ecological and physical processes. In short, each project works to support management intervention by advancing our understanding of the processes supporting realized resilience. Specifically: Reefscape-Scale Coral Cover Change (2021-2022): Document downscaled sub-sector patterns of coral cover change across the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) domain and correlate these changes to spatial drivers. We will put particular attention to refuges, i.e. areas showing maintained cover with low exposure to stressors, and resilient areas, i.e. areas showing maintained or improving cover in the face of disturbance.Environmental Summary Database: To support this work (and other projects), we will also develop pipeline and data products of summarized environmental data from remotely sensed sources to characterize patterns in oceanographic conditions and identify ecological drivers across the domain of Pacific NCRMP.Drivers of Juvenile Coral Density (2021-2022): We will document temporal patterns of juvenile coral density, and perform a correlative analysis of the potential spatial drivers, asking: How did juvenile density change across the US Pacific following the global bleaching event, which regions show enhanced recovery potential and what factors govern recovery?Drivers of Change in Reef Structure (2022-2023): Using 3D models of reef sites from SfM surveys, we will track changes in reef structure, examine the spatial correlates of this change, and cross-check SfM structural metrics to two other methods. Linking in-situ temperature to benthic change (2022-2023): We will improve our ability to link in-situ temperature to ecological impact by calculating heat stress metrics for acute and cumulative heat stress and temperature variability and then comparing them between sectors, islands, and regions. Heating metrics will then be linked to ecological surveys to assess any benthic change due to heat stress. The intent is to compare heat stress in coral reefs and determine which areas might be less exposed and/or less sensitive to heat stress and may therefore serve as areas of refugia. First, we will ask: Is structural complexity changing across fixed sites, which coral taxa are driving these patterns, and how much of this is influenced by coral vital rates versus exposure to disturbance? Further, we will determine whether reef-level growth/erosion as measured by changes in structural complexity fixed sites correlated with accretion and erosion rates measured by Bioerosion Monitoring Units (2022) and results from Carbonate Budgets (2023).
Expected Outcome:
This multi-faceted project will generate a series of products, each designed to clarify the relationship between environmental drivers and metrics of reef resilience. Specifically, we will generate: a Environmental Summary Database synthesizing environmental driver data across the NCRMP sampling domain; a paper describing reef-scape-scale change in coral cover across the NCRMP domain and it's environmental correlates; a paper describing spatial patterns of Juvenile Coral density across the NCRMP domain and it's environmental correlates; and a series of papers on the spatial patterns in reef structure and the environmental drivers of structural change across the NCRMP domain.
Project Locations:
- Hawaii
- Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
- Guam
- American Samoa
- Pacific Remote Island Areas
Project Category:
Climate Change
Project Status:
Funding Ended
Associated Products:
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