Abstract
Throughout the tropics, coral reef ecosystems, which are critically important to people, have been greatly altered by humans. Differentiating human impacts from natural drivers of ecosystem state is essential to effective management. Here we present a dataset from a large-scale monitoring program that surveys coral reef fish assemblages and habitats encompassing the bulk of the US-affiliated tropical Pacific, and spanning wide gradients in both natural drivers and human impact. Currently, this includes >5,500 surveys from 39 islands and atolls in Hawaii (including the main and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands) and affiliated geo-political regions of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the Pacific Remote Islands Areas. The dataset spans 2010–2017, during which time, each region was visited at least every three years, and ~500–1,000 surveys performed annually. This standardised dataset is a powerful resource that can be used to understand how human, environmental and oceanographic conditions influence coral reef fish community structure and function, providing a basis for research to support effective management outcomes.
Highlights
Background & SummaryCoral reefs ecosystems are critically important to people; they provide food and livelihoods to millions of people worldwide[1] and contribute to the cultural fabric of coastal communities
The implementation of standardised monitoring methods across gradients of oceanographic conditions and levels of human impact yields a powerful data resource that can be used to better understand the natural variability and differential susceptibility of coral reef ecosystems to local and global drivers. We present such a dataset, which is collected for a long-term monitoring program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (RAMP)
The data collected serve four main purposes: 1) to fulfil National Coral Reef Monitoring Plan (NCRMP) mandates to assess the status and trends of reef fish assemblages across coral reefs of the U.S.8; 2) to provide data suitable to assess the status of coral reef fisheries stocks10,11; 3) to support federal and jurisdictional management by providing a broad spatial context to status and trends apparent from, generally, spatially smaller-scale surveys conducted by those agencies[12]; and 4) to generate a consistent and large-scale dataset as a resource for the scientific community[13,14,15,16,17,18]
Summary
Coral reefs ecosystems are critically important to people; they provide food and livelihoods to millions of people worldwide[1] and contribute to the cultural fabric of coastal communities. The implementation of standardised monitoring methods across gradients of oceanographic conditions and levels of human impact yields a powerful data resource that can be used to better understand the natural variability and differential susceptibility of coral reef ecosystems to local and global drivers. We present such a dataset, which is collected for a long-term monitoring program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (RAMP). The data collected serve four main purposes: 1) to fulfil NCRMP mandates to assess the status and trends of reef fish assemblages across coral reefs of the U.S.8; 2) to provide data suitable to assess the status of coral reef fisheries stocks10,11; 3) to support federal and jurisdictional management by providing a broad spatial context to status and trends apparent from, generally, spatially smaller-scale surveys conducted by those agencies[12]; and 4) to generate a consistent and large-scale dataset as a resource for the scientific community[13,14,15,16,17,18]
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