Improving on existing maps
Current maps of the Caribbean either leave out coral reefs or are badly outdated, which hampers governments seeking to protect their nations’ offshore natural resources. The new mapping mission will establish baselines so that ongoing monitoring efforts can track changes in reef health and distribution over time.
“The best maps of coral in the Caribbean are very basic,” Tyler Smith, a coral reef ecologist at the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas, told Mongabay. “They’re created by looking at how deep the water is and then extrapolating where we expect reefs to be. As a result, there is very poor documentation for many of these reefs.”
A video about the Carnegie Airborne Observatory’s mission in the Dominican Republic. Video by Eddie Roqueta/Mongabay.
Assessments of coral health exist for only about 1 percent of Caribbean island reefs, said Smith, who is not involved in the mapping initiative.
“These maps will show us the health of Caribbean coral reefs at a scale and resolution we have never had before,” Smith said of the new initiative. “A picture is worth a thousand words. You can’t underestimate that impact. For less developed countries this may help them visualize their coral resources, which could generate more support for conservation.”
Despite the dearth of existing data, it’s clear the Caribbean’s reefs are in trouble. A decline beginning in the 1970s destroyed 59 percent of the sea’s coral cover, according to a 2012 IUCN report. The region’s two most important reef-building coral species, elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (Acropora cervicornis), declined by more than 90 percent during that time — both are now listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and as critically endangered by the IUCN.
Increasing pressures from nearly 44 million people living near the coast, overfishing, coastal pollution, climate change and invasive species drove the decline. Three massive global coral bleaching events in 1998, 2005 and between 2014 and 2017 also hit the Caribbean hard. Then last year back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, compounded the damage to the region’s remaining reefs.
But the destruction has not been uniform. Different species have different responses to stressors like warm water, resulting in a patchwork of live and dead coral. This makes resolution at the scale of individual corals key to understanding a reef’s condition and prospects for recovery.
Locating unknown nuggets of thriving coral is crucial to ensuring their protection and survival, according to Asner. These areas can be studied for insight into what allowed the coral there to survive. By using satellites, advanced airborne sensors, drones and divers, this comprehensive mapping project has the power to locate these pockets of healthy coral in time to protect them.
“Globally, we only know the location of coral reefs to 50 percent accuracy,” Asner said. “These maps will show us the good, the bad and the ugly of coral reefs in the Caribbean: where they are thriving, where they’re damaged and where they’ve [been] bleached or been destroyed by hurricanes.”
This story first appeared on Mongabay
South Africa Today – Environment
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