Reefs for the future: Resilience of coral reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands

Declining health of coral reef ecosystems led scientists to search for factors that support reef resilience: the ability of reefs to resist and recover from environmental disturbance. Scientists recently identified 11 measurable factors that affect the resilience of coral reefs (McClanahan et al., 2012). Reef resilience factors include characteristics of the coral assemblage, populations of fish that live on the reef, land use practices, and water temperature variability. These factors were used by NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC) Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) to conduct a quantitative assessment of the resilience potential of reefs across the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI).

Locations of Rapid Ecological Assessment (REA) surveys conducted by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) from 2010 to 2013 were used to designate study units called "georegions". Watersheds upstream of georegions were then grouped to delineate the area that could affect adjacent reefs through pollution, runoff, and sedimentation. REA surveys provided data to evaluate biological/ecological resilience factors, and external data sources were used to inform physical and environmental factors not directly measured by CREP. Five of the resilience factors can be directly influenced by local management. Data for each factor was compiled, normalized, and averaged to produce a composite resilience score for each georegion.

In all, twenty-nine study areas were analyzed across the MHI. Lowest composite resilience scores were earned by reefs near densely populated areas on O`ahu, while highest scores were earned near relatively sparsely populated areas of other islands. The reef resilience framework data package described herein comprises the original data sources used in this analysis, the intermediary and final data resulting from the analysis, the process documentation, and the 2-page PIFSC Special Publication published in 2014 (SP-15-001).

Data can be accessed via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive, accession #0128219.

Structural, ecological, and physical processes including, diversity, recruitment, herbivory, disease, and thermal tolerance have been identified as key elements contributing to reef resilience. This analysis, funded by the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program, integrates interdisciplinary data sets collected by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) and its partners to operationalize reef resilience in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. It is important to identify and understand these factors, so that management strategies can be tailored to maintaining or restoring coral communities to maximize their chances of survival in a changing climate. This analysis contributes to the local jurisdiction's capacity to meaningfully assess reef ecosystem condition in relation to a range of threats. A key aspect of the reef resilience framework is that it can empower local action to improve resilience of coral reefs because some drivers of resilience are heavily influenced by large-scale climatic forces, while others can be directly affected by local management.

PIFSC. 2014. Reefs for the future: Resilience of coral reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands. NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, PIFSC Special Publication, SP-15-001, 2p.

Reef resilience factors as described by McClanahan et al. (2012) include:

1. Pollution,

2. Sedimentation,

3. Herbivore biomass,

4. Macroalgae cover,

5. Coral diversity,

6. Coral recruitment,

7. Disease prevalence,

8. Bleaching resistance,

9. Physical impacts,

10. Fishing pressure, and

11. Sea surface temperature variability.

See download document (data dictionary).

While every effort has been made to ensure that these data are accurate and reliable within the limits of the current state of the art, NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by errors or omissions in the data, nor as a result of the failure of the data to function on a particular system. NOAA makes no warranty, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty.

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Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) Data Sharing Recommendations, version 9.0 updated August 12, 2015:

CREP welcomes the opportunity to collaborate on research issues contributing to the scientific basis for better management of marine ecosystems. CREP has a very diverse set of field activities that generates large volumes of data using an array of data collection protocols.

The following recommendations are for your consideration as you use this data:

1) Data analyses should take all field exigencies into account. The most effective way to do this would be active collaboration with CREP principal investigators.

2) In all presentations, product releases, or publications using data generated by CREP, proper acknowledgement of both CREP and the individuals responsible for data collection is expected. Citing the DOI (if available) is preferred, a non-DOI example is listed below.

3) If you collect or generate data for the same study areas, CREP requests that you share relevant information on complimentary data collections.

4) Those receiving data are strongly urged to inform the CREP Data Management Team of any errors and discrepancies that are discovered during the course of using these data. They are further urged to bring to the attention of the Team all problems and difficulties encountered in using these data. This information is necessary in order to improve the collections and to facilitate more efficient and economical data processing and retrieval. The users are asked to supply copies of any missing data that may be located, and to provide information as to significant subsets and special aggregations of data that are developed in using the material provided.

Example citation:

"This publication makes use of data products provided by the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP). The analysis and interpretations presented here are solely that of the current authors”

Data can be accessed via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive, accession #0128219.

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Please cite NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) when using these data.

Example

Cite as: Schumacher, Brett; Coral Reef Ecosystem Program; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2015). Resilience of coral reefs in the main Hawaiian Islands (NCEI Accession 0128219). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Unpublished Dataset. [access date]

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Data streams were compiled and analyzed by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) researchers using MS Excel and Access 2010, Minitab, PRIMER version 6 with the Permanova+ add-on, and ArcMap 10.1.

The foundation of the analysis was in situ ecological survey data collected by NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) under the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). These surveys were conducted around all of the populated main Hawaiian Islands, and georegions were delineated on each of these islands. Kaho'olawe was not included. Also, sections of some islands are not covered by surveys due to funding and logistical constraints. Therefore, parts of some islands are not covered by this analysis.

Prior to conducting surveys, researchers are trained to identify and estimate/measure size of fish and corals along with other ecological metrics. Both classroom and field training and tests must be completed for all researchers (experienced and inexperienced alike) before each round of surveys begins. This training ensures that ecological surveys are conducted consistently by all researchers within survey efforts and also across periodic survey efforts.

See description of training process in "Accuracy" section.

This project integrated NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) survey data with data from other, external projects (e.g. Watershed Health Index). Because external projects were implemented for purposes different from CREP surveys, the spatial extent of CREP surveys does not always align with other study zones. We endeavored to group sites and delineate georegions to align to the greatest degree possible, but some spatial incongruity remains, as evident in figures showing locations of survey sites relative to watershed boundaries.

Eleven metrics of reef resilience were identified in the McClanahan et al. 2012 paper. This project attempted to include all metrics in the analysis, but data to support one metric (physical damage) were not available in sufficient quantity for all georegions. Therefore, this metric was not used to calculate composite resilience scores.

Analysis is modeled after Maynard et al. 2012, "Coral reef resilience to climate change in Saipan, CNMI; field-based assessments and implications for vulnerability and future management." The current project utilized slightly different data streams in some cases (e.g. updated SST metrics), but the analysis followed the same overall procedures.

With some datasets, two different individuals generated summary statistics that were verified against each other. In other cases, the analysis was run two different ways or two different times and results were cross-checked. "Sanity checks" were also performed to evaluate if the results make sense and are logical.

NOAA IRC and NOAA Fisheries ITS resources and assets.

The principal analytical task of this project was to calculate eleven metrics of "reef resilience" as identified by McClanahan et al. (2012). These metrics account for various aspects of the coral reef ecosystem, and are derived from several data streams, as described in the process steps.