Britta Schaffelke

Modern biodiversity monitoring programs are designed to provide rapid assessments of trends in the abundance and distribution of keystone taxa and timely scientific insights for decision‐making. An important consideration when delivering this information to stakeholders is the quantification of uncertainty, which determines the robustness of detecting changes across habitats and regions. In coral reef science, sparse and fragmented monitoring datasets hinder assessments of reef habitat changes. We introduce a comprehensive prediction framework for estimating trends in hard coral cover and associated uncertainty at a local scale (5 km ² predictive cells). The model accounts for spatial and temporal dependencies in coral cover through a latent process formulation, where correlation is structured explicitly in space and time, and includes environmental variables describing exposure to heat stress and tropical cyclones. We use a weighted spatial aggregation approach to predict trends at subregional and regional scales, with subregional and regional extents varying according to geographic context. The same approach is applied to estimate trends at broader spatial scales by combining outputs from multiple models through the ReefCloud platform, ensuring that predictions reflect the spatial distribution of reef‐building corals and that uncertainty is appropriately propagated across spatial scales. The model also quantifies effects of heat stress and tropical cyclones and characterizes their associations with coral cover change across gradients of disturbance intensity. We demonstrate the value of the framework using two use cases: the central Great Barrier Reef in Australia and American Samoa. Together, these applications highlight the potential of our integrated approach as a widely applicable method for predicting coral cover trends at various spatial scales. We also discuss the substantial uncertainty associated with the framework due to the limitations of available datasets and suggest approaches to improve the robustness of trend detection for coral reefs and their attribution to environmental disturbances.

The goal of ecosystem management is to maintain healthy and resilient ecosystems over time. These attributes can be summarised under a general term widely used in management plans: ecosystem condition, defined as the overall quality of an ecosystem relative to a desired or reference state. However, measuring and monitoring ecosystem condition remains a challenge. Monitoring ecosystem condition requires a suite of ecological indicators that simultaneously capture the complexity and variability of ecological processes, while being informative and usable in management and decision-making contexts. Such indicators need to be holistic, measurable, sensitive and scalable. Here we outline a resilience-based monitoring framework for coral reefs that consolidates monitoring data and research insights into a relevant, integrated format. The framework includes indicators of ecosystem state (coral cover) and key processes (represented by recovery performance, macroalgae prevalence, community composition, and coral juvenile density). Indicators are generated and scaled from monitoring data by applying explicit, reef-specific thresholds, providing a simple but comprehensive set of ecosystem condition values. Using cases from the Great Barrier Reef, we demonstrate how the framework integrates these indicators for detailed assessments of reef habitat condition and its potential role in management. Based on these case studies, we discuss important considerations for applying this framework worldwide, acknowledging current limitations related to data availability, resolution, and the length of time series.

Coral reefs, vital to marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of about a billion people worldwide, face unprecedented threats from climate change, pollution, and overfishing. Effective and timely conservation strategies guided by status and trend information from ecological monitoring are essential to safeguard these ecosystems.ReefCloud, an innovative platform leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, offers a transformative approach to coral reef monitoring. This not only enhances our understanding of coral reef ecosystems but also accelerates how science can inform targeted conservation actions.ReefCloud integrates image-based monitoring, machine learning algorithms, and statistical models to provide real-time, quality-assured assessments of coral reef status and trends that can be interrogated across various geographical scales. Using AI, ReefCloud can rapidly analyse high volumes of underwater imagery, identify coral reef taxa, detect bleaching events, and assess overall reef condition with unprecedented precision. This automated analysis significantly reduces the time and resources required for traditional monitoring methods, enabling more frequent, comprehensive and standardised assessments.The platform’s cloud-based infrastructure ensures that data is accessible to researchers, conservationists, and policymakers worldwide. ReefCloud’s user-friendly interface allows for seamless data sharing and collaboration, fostering a global network of over 2,000 practitioners and stakeholders from over 90 countries committed to coral reef conservation.For example, ReefCloud enables the identification of at-risk coral reef areas, supports the development of adaptive management strategies, and facilitates the evaluation of the effectiveness of conservation interventions. The platform also advances the capabilities of First Nation ranger programs and citizen science initiatives, empowering local communities to contribute to reef monitoring efforts and to support co-management approaches. The platform’s scalability and adaptability to diverse use cases make it a valuable tool for addressing the dynamic and complex challenges facing coral reefs in the 21st century.Here, we will introduce ReefCloud through use cases from various jurisdictions that illustrate the platform’s value as a significant advancement in coral reef monitoring. The presentation will highlight the next critical steps needed to deliver actionable knowledge in the context of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which will inform the protection of coral reefs as globally critical ecosystems, ensuring their resilience and sustainability for future generations.

Long-term ecological monitoring is indispensable to identify and document changes from the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. Coral reefs are some of the most biodiverse and most threatened of the Earth’s ecosystems. Accurate information on the status and trends of coral reefs equips decision makers with fundamental information to support the protection of these vital marine ecosystems.Monitoring of coral reefs is conducted for many purposes, at various temporal resolutions and geographic scales, using various sampling techniques and indicators. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), an operational network of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), has been producing high-level coral reef status and trend assessments since 1998. The most recent Status of Coral Reefs of the World report, published in 2021, estimated long-term trends of two widely collected indicators for the condition of coral reefs, hard coral cover and cover of macroalgae (both are recommended indicators of healthy coral reefs by ICRI, and ‘Essential Ocean Variables’ as defined by the Global Ocean Observing System). The global dataset spanned from 1978 to 2019 and showed that in most regions of the world, coral cover decreased while algal cover increased, indicating a widespread decline in the condition of coral reefs. The production of the next Status of Coral Reefs of the World report and of status reports from the Pacific and Caribbean regions is currently underway, and an overview of key findings will be presented.It is challenging to combine disparate coral reef monitoring data for regional and global-scale assessments because of differences in sampling methods, sample sizes, lack of data standards and biases or gaps in the representativeness across geographic and temporal scales or for certain indicators. Notwithstanding these challenges, the value of regular quantitative analyses of such integrated datasets is immense. Ecosystem trends detected at regional and global scales provide a powerful basis to foster collaborative partnerships between scientists, conservation managers and practitioners, to understand key drivers and ecological dynamics for guiding and supporting evidence-based policies, and to equip Governments with essential mechanisms to implement and monitor their progress towards national and international targets and commitments.The collective experience, capability and willingness to share knowledge and data under the umbrella of the GCRMN has also provided important learnings to facilitate more standardisation and interoperability of coral reef monitoring protocols, use of new technologies, improved data management and analysis, and capability-building of the next generation of coral reef monitors. This presentation will highlight some of these developments and how the GCRMN contributes to SDG14 by leveraging innovative tools and technologies and providing actionable knowledge on coral reef status and trends at different scales and to different audiences.

Nearly a billion people depend on tropical seascapes. The need to ensure sustainable use of these vital areas is recognised, as one of 17 policy commitments made by world leaders, in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 (‘Life below Water’) of the United Nations. SDG 14 seeks to secure marine sustainability by 2030. In a time of increasing social-ecological unpredictability and risk, scientists and policymakers working towards SDG 14 in the Asia–Pacific region need to know: (1) How are seascapes changing? (2) What can global society do about these changes? and (3) How can science and society together achieve sustainable seascape futures? Through a horizon scan, we identified nine emerging research priorities that clarify potential research contributions to marine sustainability in locations with high coral reef abundance. They include research on seascape geological and biological evolution and adaptation; elucidating drivers and mechanisms of change; understanding how seascape functions and services are produced, and how people depend on them; costs, benefits, and trade-offs to people in changing seascapes; improving seascape technologies and practices; learning to govern and manage seascapes for all; sustainable use, justice, and human well-being; bridging communities and epistemologies for innovative, equitable, and scale-crossing solutions; and informing resilient seascape futures through modelling and synthesis. Researchers can contribute to the sustainability of tropical seascapes by co-developing transdisciplinary understandings of people and ecosystems, emphasising the importance of equity and justice, and improving knowledge of key cross-scale and cross-level processes, feedbacks, and thresholds.