title: Characterizing coral condition using estimates of three-dimensional colony surface area.
abstract: Coral reefs provide shoreline protection, biological diversity, fishery harvests, and tourism, all values that stem from the physically-complex coral infrastructure. Stony corals (scleractinians) construct and maintain the reef through deposition of calcium carbonate. Therefore, assessment of coral reefs requires at least some measurement endpoints that reflect the biological and physical condition of stony corals. Most monitoring programs portray coral quantity as live coral cover, which is the two-dimensional proportion of coral surface to sea floor viewed from above (planar view). The absence of the third dimension, however, limits our ability to characterize coral reef value, physiology, health and sustainability. A three-dimensional (3D) approach more realistically characterizes coral structure available as community habitat and, when combined with estimates of live coral tissue, quantifies the amount of living coral available for photosynthesis, growth and reproduction. A rapid coral survey procedure that coupled 3D coral quantification with more traditional survey measurements was developed and tested in the field. The survey procedure relied on only three underwater observations--species identification, colony size, and proportion of live tissue--made on each colony in the transect. These observations generated a variety of metrics, including several based on 3D colony surface area, that are relevant to reef management.
authors.affiliation: National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Gulf Ecology Division, US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, 1 Sabine Island Drive, Gulf Breeze, FL 32561, USA. fisher.william@epa.gov
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.forename: William P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Quarles
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Patrick
authors.forename: Jed G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.forename: Peggy S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Becky L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Hemmer
authors.forename: Mel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Parsons
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D037421:Anthozoa / Q000502:physiology*; D044822:Biodiversity; D017753:Ecosystem; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D011156:Population Density; D011157:Population Dynamics