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.

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Organization: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce