A Decision Support System for Ecosystem-Based Management of Tropical Coral Reef Environments

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A Decision Support System for Ecosystem-Based
Management ofTropical Coral Reef Environments 

• F. Muller-Karger, M. Eakin, L. Guild,
• C. Hu, M. Vega, R. Nemani, T. Christensen, L.
  Wood, C. Ravillious,
• C. Nim, J. Li, C. Fitzgerald, J. Hendee, L.
  Gramer, S. Lynds

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Partnerships

• NOAA NESDIS/CRW-CRCP (Mark Eakin, Tyler
  Christensen)
• NOAA AOML / ICON/CREWS-CRCP (James Hendee)
• NASA Headquarters (Woody Turner, Paula Bontempi)
• NASA Ames (Liane Guild, Ramakrishna Nemani)
• UNEP-WCMC (Louisa Wood, Corinna Ravilious, Claire
  Fitzgerald)
• University of South Florida (Frank Muller-Karger,
  Chuanmin Hu, Maria Vega)
• (Welcoming a partnership with Australia!)

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Acknowledgements

• Funding provided by
• NASA Applications Program
• Woody Turner
• 2008 Ecological Forecasting application area
• 4-year program (2008-2013)
• NOAA
• NESDIS Coral reef Watch

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Coral Biogeography
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Coral Socio-Economic Importance

• Considering
• potential for human food supply
• recreation and management (i.e. marine protected
  area monitoring and regulation)
• socio-economic value US6,000 / Ha/year
  (Costanza et al. 1997).
• (swamp/floodplains (8,000 ha/y), wetlands
  (5,000 ha/y), mangroves (3,000 ha/y), estuaries
  (1,500 ha/y))
• -up to 675 billion annually in fish, seafood,
  tourism,
• and coastal protection worldwide
• -17 billion in U.S. tourism
• -1 billion people rely on reef fish for food

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Tropical Coral Reefs Ecosystems under Stress

• Over 60 of the world's reefs are under threat.
• Factors
• increasing temperature,
• increasing dissolved inorganic carbon in ocean
  waters,
• increased use of coastal resources including
  fishing,
• coastal development,
• pollution

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NOAA Coral Reef Watch(Mark Eakin and team /
NESDIS) Mission

• To provide remote sensing tools for the
  conservation of coral reef ecosystems.
• Coral Reef Watch aims to assist in the
  management, study, and assessment of impacts of
  environmental change on coral reef ecosystems.

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NOAA Coral Reef Watch

• NOAA Coral Reef Watch DSS
• empirical models and the AVHRR Global Area
  Coverage
• near-real time suite of products to monitor and
  forecast thermal stress that may cause coral
  bleaching
• Products
• night-time only 50 km SST anomaly,
• coral bleaching HotSpots,
• Degree Heating Weeks, and
• Satellite Bleaching Alerts.
• http//www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/methodology.
  html.

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CRW-Operational SST-based products

• Primary Products AVHRR SST-based

Coral specific
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NOAA CRW DSS
DHW corresponds to one week of SST exceeding the
maximum summer SST by one ºC. A value of two DHWs
indicates two hot weeks, but is also equivalent
to one entire week of SST exceeding the maximum
summer SST by two ºC.
The 2005 Bleaching Event in the Western
Hemisphere. The image shows the Degree-Heating
Weeks (DHW) accumulated through 1 November, 2005.
Note high DHW (yellow-orange colors) in the
eastern Caribbean Sea. Significant bleaching took
place in the U.S. Territories and adjacent
islands.
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Objectives of NASA-NOAA-USF Program

• Assess value of high-spatial resolution SST data
  (MODIS, AVHRR) and the Global Coral Reef
  Millennium Map (Landsat) to improve the NOAA
  Coral Reef Watch decision support system (CRW
  DSS)
• Help further develop the CRW DSS
• Develop end-to-end evaluation and feedback
  mechanism to meet user needs.
• Link to plans for
• Hyperspectral and Infrared Imager (HyspIRI)
• Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM)
• NPP, NPOESS, other environmental satellites

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• Help develop the CRW DSS includes
• Assess value of existing CRW products.
• Span scales from ICON/CREW high temporal
  spatial resolution to global CRW
• Evaluate optimal spatial and temporal resolutions
  for coral reef applications.
• Experimental 1, 4, and 50 km spatial resolution
  products from MODIS and AVHRR.
• Validate in partnership with NOAA ICON/CREWS
• Consider enhanced stress indices (e.g. cold,
  heat, water quality, other)
• Integrate Coral Reef Millennium Map products.
• Visualization and knowledge interface, tailored
  to monitoring and policy-making.

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Evaluation component

• Cooperative Institute for Research in
  Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University
  of Colorado at Boulder
• (Mark Mcaffrey, Susan Lynds)
• Will verify that the program meets goals of the
  NASA Applied Sciences Program
• Will assess
• Efforts to document development of products and
  tools
• Effort to solicit feedback and assistance on use
  and usability
• Effort to learn whether the task meets the needs
  of identified stakeholders

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Sample product Global DHW Rama Nemani and NASA
Ames supercomputer

• Accumulation of 12 weeks of hotspots by the first
  week of January 2008
• at moderate (8 km) resolution.

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Sample product Millennium Map
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Florida Keys and Puerto Rico high-res test sites

• Map of FKNMS showing various water zones. The map
  covers an area from 24.09? N to 26.23? N and from
  83.22? W to 79.9? W. The circled crosses show
  locations of the NDBC stations. Base map courtesy
  of Kevin Kirsch (FKNMS).

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High-resolution Degree Heating Week example

• Left 50-km DHW product
  Right Equivalent 1-km DHW
  product
• 
  for 3-day
  period ending on August 20, 2005
• Land mask colors are reversed between the images
  with zero DHW shown as black in the NOAA image
  and white in the USF image.
• Reference Building an Automated Integrated
  Observing System to Detect Sea Surface
  Temperature Anomaly Events in the Florida Keys.
  2009.
• Chuanmin Hu, Frank Muller-Karger, Brock Murch,
  Douglas Myhre, Judd Taylor, Remy Luerssen,
  Christopher Moses, Caiyun Zhang, Lew Gramer, and
  James Hendee. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND
  REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 47, NO. 6, JUNE 2009

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High resolution preserves spatial patterns of
importance to reefs

• High-resolution (1-km) AVHRR SST imagery (NOAA-16
  satellite) showing small-scale (1020 km, lt 1
  ?C) frontal eddies (annotated with black arrows)
  along the shallow isobaths in the Florida Straits
• January 22, 2002 at 736 GMT and January 23, 2002
  at 1845 GMT.
• Eddies are due to shelf wave dynamics, and they
  cannot be detected by other coarser resolution
  data (4 km or lower).

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Other possible enhancements and joint work

• Cold water stress index
• Marine Spatial Planning support via CRW
• Variables SST, CHL, SSH, other?
• Access monthly (weekly) climatologies per pixel
• Long-term time series
• Trends in variables
• Plotting and data extraction
• Millennium Kristian Teleki had proposed a
  visualization and knowledge interface, tailored
  to monitoring and policy-making.

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Cold water stress monitoring

• January 25 February 17, 2010
• 78 sites were surveyed across the Florida Reef
  Tract from the Lower Keys to Martin County
• Areas impacted the most were the inshore and mid
  channel zones from Summerland Key in the lower
  Keys through Biscayne National Park.
• Forereef zones region-wide, reefs west of
  Summerland Key and reefs north of Biscayne
  National Park were, much less affected but were
  highly impacted.
• Highest coral mortality seen in the last 5 years.
  Frequent observations showed that corals would
  generally pale for a day then die.
• All species were affected

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Florida Reef Tract
SST between 10º C 21º C
Critical low SST temperature threshold is 13
C mass mortality in scleractinian coral
communities Dr. Tianran Chen, South China Sea
Institute of Oceanology, Guangzhou, China
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Additional Cases Reported

• Saudi Arabia, Northern Gulf
• Reported in February 2010
• Lowest water temp. 10 C
• Affected Species Acropora
• Miami, Florida
• 1969/70 (snowed)
• Affected Species Acropora
• Never proliferated in Dry Tortugas
• The Daya Bay, Northern South China Sea
• During Cold Events Mean SST for February fall to
  lt 14?, including six continuous days at 12.3?.
• Observed coral taxa such as Turbinaria peltata,
  Plesiastrea versipora and Acropora pruinosa,
  suffer from cold-water stress.

Staghorn coral, wikipedia
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SUMMARY

• -Partnership established between NASA, NOAA, USF
  to further develop the Coral Reef Watch DSS
• -Elements will include user surveys and ground
  validation
• -Products will include NASA products (MODIS,
  Landsat Millennium Coral Reef Map)
• -Pathfinder for higher resolution missions
  (HyspIRI, LDCM, VIIRS/NPP)
• -Next team meeting 9-10 December 2010, NASA Ames