Indicators for assessing the ecological dynamics and sustainability of southern Floridas coral reef and coastal fisheries
"Commercial and recreational fisheries target hundreds of fish and shellfish species across the seascape of southern Florida including inshore coastal bays, the flats of barrier islands, coral reefs and offshore pelagic waters. The ecological dynamics and...
Geographic variation in clonal structure in a reef building Caribbean coral, Acropora palmata
"Species that build the physical structure of ecosystems often reproduce clonally, both in terrestrial (e.g., grasses, trees) and marine (e.g., corals, seagrasses) environments. The degree of clonality may vary over a species' range in accordance with the...
Ecopath with Ecosim: Methods, capabilities and limitations
"The Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) modeling approach combines software for ecosystem trophic mass balance analysis (Ecopath), with a dynamic modeling capability (Ecosim) for exploring past and future impacts of fishing and environmental disturbances as well a...
Towards marine ecosystem based management in South Florida: Investigating the connections among ecosystem pressures, states, and services in a complex coastal system
"Marine ecosystem based management plans are gaining popularity with natural resource managers, but examples of their successful implementation remain few. The complexity inherent in marine ecosystems presents a major obstacle to understanding how individ...
Recovery from blast fishing on coral reefs: A tale of two scales
"Dynamite or blast fishing is one of the most immediate and destructive threats to coral reefs worldwide. However, little is known about the long-term ecosystem effects of such blasts or the dynamics of recovery. Here, we examine coral reef recovery in th...
Percent recent mortality (PRM) of stony corals as an ecological indicator of coral reef condition
"The reef communities of the Florida coral reef tract play a major role in supporting the regional economy but are threatened by increased exploitation and environmental factors. Coral reef ecosystem services are vital to the economy of SE Florida where r...
Predictive mapping of fish species richness across shallow-water seascapes in the Caribbean
"Effective management of coral reef ecosystems requires accurate, quantitative and spatially explicit information on patterns of species richness at spatial scales relevant to the management process. We combined empirical modelling techniques, remotely se...
Decision support framework for prioritizing coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands
"The coral reef ecosystems of the U.S. Virgin Islands are some of the most intensively surveyed and threatened tropical ecosystems on earth. These coral reefs vary widely in terms of biophysical structure, seascape context, socio-economic value and exposu...
A model-based approach to determine the long-term effects of multiple interacting stressors on coral reefs
"The interaction between multiple stressors on Caribbean coral reefs, namely, fishing effort and hurricane impacts, is a key element in the future sustainability of reefs. We develop an analytic model of coralalgal interactions and explicitly consider gra...
Shining a light on the composition and distribution patterns of mesophotic and subphotic fish communities in Hawai'i
"As agencies shift from single-species management to ecosystem-based fisheries management, ecosystem models are gaining interest for understanding species dynamics in relation to oceanographic and ecological processes and human marine uses. However, infor...
Indicators for assessing the ecological dynamics and sustainability of southern Floridas coral reef and coastal fisheries