Edwin Hernandez

Sociedad Ambiente Marino

The ever-increasing need for coral restoration as a tool available to mitigate reef declines and aid in the recovery of lost ecosystem services requires improving restoration performance over time through an adaptive management framework to evaluate the status of restoration programs using uniform, consistent metrics. An evaluation tool, presented...

The climate crisis poses a grave threat to numerous small island developing states (SIDS), intensifying risks from extreme weather events and sea level rise (SLR). This vulnerability heightens the dangers of coastal erosion, chronic water quality degradation, and dwindling coastal resources, demanding global attention. The resultant loss of ecologi...

An increasing sea surface temperature as a result of climate change has led to a higher frequency and strengthening of hurricanes across the northeastern Caribbean in recent decades, with increasing risks of impacts to endangered corals and to the sustainability of coral reefs. Category five Hurricanes Irma and María during 2017 caused unprecedente...

The persistence and resilience of marginal shallow coral reefs at their limits of environmental tolerance have declined due to chronic environmental degradation and climate change. However, the consequences for the natural recovery ability of reefs of disturbance remain poorly understood. This study considered the potential for natural recovery thr...

Coral reefs in Puerto Rico have shown significant chronic degradation due to multiple human factors and climate change, with little evidence of recovery. In this study, we questioned what is the potential for natural recovery of fringing reefs impacted by different environmental factors on the north coast of Puerto Rico. Shallow coral reefs affecte...

The initial objectives of the U.S. Coral Reef Initiative Program for Puerto Rico, such as the mapping of benthic habitats (including coral reefs), conducting baseline quantitative characterizations of coral reef communities, routine monitoring of selected reef sites, and launching of a coral reef public awareness and outreach program have been full...

Over the past few decades, coral reef ecosystems have been lost at accelerated rates as a result of global climate change and local stressors. Local management schemes can help improve the condition of coral reefs by enhancing their ecosystem recovery capacity. Caribbean conservation efforts include mitigation of local anthropogenic stressors, and...

Values represent fourth root transformed counts. (A) Pseudodiploria strigosa reef-building coral species. (B) Orbicella annularis reef-building coral species. (C) Porites astreoides, a weedy coral species. (D) Dictyota spp., a common brown macroalgae genus in the Caribbean.

(A) Percent live cover of sclearactinian corals. (B) Percent macroalgae cover. Percent cover were based on measurements based on point counts every 0.5 m across a 10 m transect (n = 21), differing from the photo-cuadrat sampling in 2017. Arrow bars represent the 95% confidence intervals. Localities 1 and 2 correspond to the vicinity of comptemporar...

Caribbean coral reefs provide essential ecosystem services to society, including fisheries, tourism and shoreline protection from coastal erosion. However, these reefs are also exhibiting major declining trends, leading to the evolution of novel ecosystems dominated by non-reef building taxa, with potentially altered ecological functions. In the se...

Subject to hurricane disturbance for millennia, natural ecosystems of Puerto Rico exhibit clearpatterns of resistance (e.g., many tree species have little immediate storm-related mortality) and resilience (e.g., leaf litterfall and stream chemistry returned to pre-hurricane levels in as little as five years). Contemporaneous studies of near-shore a...

Caribbean reefs have experienced unprecedented changes in the past four decades. Of great concern is the perceived widespread shift from coral to macroalgal dominance and the question of whether it represents a new, stable equilibrium for coral-reef communities. The primary causes of the shift—grazing pressure (top-down), nutrient loading (bottom-u...

Chronic coral reef degradation has been characterized by a significant decline in the population abundance and live tissue cover of scleractinian corals across the wider Caribbean. Acropora cervicornis is among the species whose populations have suffered an unprecedented collapse throughout the region. This species, which once dominated the shallow...

Coral reefs worldwide are degrading due to climate change, overfishing, pollution, coastal development, coral bleaching, and diseases. In areas where the natural recovery of an ecosystem is negligible or protection through management interventions insufficient, active restoration becomes critical. The Reef Futures symposium in 2018 brought together...

Coral reefs worldwide are degrading due to climate change, overfishing, pollution, coastal development, bleaching and diseases. In areas where natural recovery is negligible or protection through management interventions insufficient, active restoration becomes critical. The Reef Futures symposium in 2018 brought together over 400 reef restoration...

Category five hurricanes Irma and María (September 2017) caused significant damage to shallow seagrass communities across Puerto Rico. The magnitude and spatial extent of hurricane impacts on representative seagrass habitats of Culebra Island were addressed using a combination of random photo-quadrats and before–after hurricanes GIS-based imagery a...

Coral reefs are facing unprecedented global, regional and local threats that continue to degrade near-shore habitats. Water quality degradation, due to unsustainable development practices at coastal watersheds, is one of the greatest stressors across multiple spatial scales. The goal of this study was to assess near-shore coral reef benthic communi...

Caribbean reefs have experienced unprecedented changes in the past four decades. Of great concern is the perceived widespread shift from coral to macroalgal dominance and the question of whether it represents a new, stable equilibrium for coral-reef communities. The primary causes of the shift -- grazing pressure (top-down), nutrient loading (botto...

The impact of fecal contamination of coastal waters and coral reefs is a major cause of concern in marine reserves in Puerto Rico. The measurement of the association between septic tank frequency in watersheds of creeks draining into these reserves and coastal water quality and coral reef condition is of importance in configuring pollution control...

Category-5 hurricanes Irma and María impacted the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, with waves in excess of 10 m. Herein, we provide the first assessment of hurricane damage to community-based coral farming and reef restoration at several locations from Culebra Island, Puerto Rico. Hurricanes destroyed 75 coral farms, killing 11,074 Acropor...

Low-tech coral farming and reef rehabilitation have become important tools to foster com-munity-based participation in the management of coastal social-ecological systems. Lessonslearned from coral demographic dynamics, ecosystem-level benefits, and sociologicaldynamics achieved in Culebra Island, Puerto Rico, are discussed. Important gaps regardin...

Unsustainable land uses may result in poor watershed management, increased soil erosion, poorly-planned urban development, increased runoff, and sewage pollution, creating an environmental stress gradient across coastal coral reefs. This study was aimed at: 1) Evaluating water quality within and outside the Canal Luis Peña Natural Reserve (CLPNR),...

Sedimentation is a critical threat to coral reefs worldwide. Major land use alteration at steep, highly erodible semi-arid islands accelerates the potential of soil erosion, runoff, and sedimentation stress to nearshore coral reefs during extreme rainfall events. The goal of this study was to assess spatio-temporal variation of sedimentation dynami...

Urban shoreline erosion mitigation through beach renourishment has often been dismissed as environmentally in significant. Given predicted impacts of sea level rise (SLR) and increased shoreline erosion, such activities might become a common practice in the future. But its long-term impacts on adjacent coral reefs have remained poorly documented. B...

Coral skeletons are valuable archives of past ocean conditions. However, interpretation of coral paleotemperature records is confounded by uncertainties associated with single element-ratio thermometers, including Sr/Ca. A new approach, Sr-U, uses U/Ca to constrain the influence of Rayleigh fractionation on Sr/Ca [DeCarlo et al., 2016]. Here, we bu...

The marine managed areas (MMAs) of the U.S. Caribbean are summarized and specific data-rich cases are examined to determine their impact upon fisheries management in the region. In this region, the productivity and connectivity of benthic habitats such as mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs is essential for many species targeted by fisheries. A min...

Coral reefs have largely declined across multiple spatial scales due to a combination of local-scale anthropogenic impacts, and due to regional-global climate change. This has resulted in a significant loss of entire coral functional groups, including western Atlantic Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) biotopes, and in a net decline of coral ree...

Coral reefs have largely declined across the northeastern Caribbean following the 2005 massive bleaching event. Climate change-related sea surface warming and coral disease outbreaks of a white plague-like syndrome and of yellow band disease (YBD) have caused significant coral decline affecting massive reef building species (i.e., Orbicella annular...

Ecological impacts of military bombing activities in Puerto Rico have often been described as minimal, with recurrent allegations of confounding effects by hurricanes, coral diseases and local anthropogenic stressors. Reef craters, though isolated, are associated with major colony fragmentation and framework pulverization, with a net permanent loss...

Coral reefs have largely declined across the northeastern Caribbean following the 2005 massive bleaching event. Climate change-related sea surface warming and coral disease outbreaks of a white plague-like syndrome and of yellow band disease (YBD) have caused significant coral decline affecting massive reef building species (i.e., Orbicella annular...

Ecological impacts of military bombing activities in Puerto Rico have often been described as minimal, with recurrent allegations of confounding effects by hurricanes, coral diseases and local anthropogenic stressors. Reef craters, though isolated, are associated with major colony fragmentation and framework pulverization, with a net permanent loss...

Ecosystem-based management and community-based participation in governance of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been identified as key elements to improve management success, local stakeholder support, and compliance with regulations. However, both are often rarely achieved, resulting in poor MPA governance, support and success. A quantitative ass...

Chronic eutrophication and turbidity are critical detrimental factors impacting coral reef ecosystems, adversely affecting their ecological functions, services, benefits, and resilience across multiple spatial scales and over prolonged periods of time. Inadequate land use practices and lack of appropriate sewage treatment can adversely contribute t...

We investigated the current patterns of diversity by country and by class of echinoderms, and analyzed their biogeographical, depth, and habitat or substratum affinities, using the database of the appendix of this book. Traditionally, the area has been divided into five biogeographical Regions and nine Provinces that cover a wide climate range. Cur...

14.1 Introduction The island of Puerto Rico is located in the northeastern part of the Caribbean Sea (18°13 0 N–66°28 0 W). Puerto Rico is considered an archipelago formed by the main island and other small islands mainly off its eastern and southern coastlines (Fig. 14.1). The eastern shelf is very shallow (typically less than 30 m in depth) and d...

Background/Question/Methods Coral reefs were originally conceived under the classical equilibrium community organization model due to their apparent stability over the past 200,000 years. However, this view has been challenged by long-term ecological studies showing that these communities are highly dynamic in terms of their species composition d...

http://www.intechopen.com/books/visions-for-global-tourism-industry-creating-and-sustaining-competitive-strategies/long-term-impacts-of-non-sustainable-tourism-and-urban-development-in-tropical-coastal-habitats-in-a Non-sustainable urban and tourism development have resulted in significant negative impacts to local natural resources, food security...

http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/an-interdisciplinary-erosion-mitigation-approach-for-coral-reef-protection-a-case-study-from-the-eas The lack of a scientifically-based methodology to guide watershed management strategies is partly to blame for deficient to non-existent erosion control activities on Culebra and on most islands of the...

Background/Question/Methods There is increasing evidence that sea surface warming trends are causing unequivocal impacts on coral reef ecosystems at a planetary scale. Sea surface temperature (SST) has shown a significant increase over the last few decades across circumtropical oceans. Impacts have included significant % coral cover decline, decli...

Background/Question/Methods Several islands across the archipelago of Puerto Rico (PR) were historically used as targets for naval training activities by the U.S. Navy and other NATO countries, including the island municipalities of Culebra (1901-1975) and Vieques (1941-2000). Long-term socio-economic, health and ecological impacts of naval traini...

Mass bleaching events have become a major cause of coral decline at a global scale. In the summer/fall of 2005 the northeastern Caribbean experienced a record-breaking sea surface warming that resulted in a prolonged mass bleaching event and significant percent coral cover decline of the principal Caribbean reef-building coral Montastraea annularis...

A mass mortality event of the long-spined sea urchin Diadema antillarum (Philippi, 1845) occurred during 1983-1984 across the western Atlantic. Recovery to pre-mortality densities has been slow throughout most of the Caribbean as current stocks remain low, existing at a small fraction of previously recorded levels. To measure population recovery at...

Capítulo que describe las alternativas tecnológicas para el cultivo y la restauración de los arrecifes de coral en el contexto de los impactos del cambio climático.

The rising temperature of the world's oceans has become a major threat to coral reefs globally as the severity and frequency of mass coral bleaching and mortality events increase. In 2005, high ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean resulted in the most severe bleaching event ever recorded in the basin. Satellite-based tools prov...

Sea surface temperature during the 2005 Caribbean bleaching event. Sea surface temperature (SST) averaged across the 0.5-degree pixels that contained or were nearest Caribbean reef locations (bounded by 35°N, 55°W, 5°N and the coast of the Americas). The ‘+’ symbols indicate the average climatological temperature during each month and the dashed li...

Complete data record for all survey data used in the analyses. Multiple observations from the same reef site, date and depth (±5 m) were combined as either means of percent cover data or proportion of the number of colonies surveyed to provide 2575 bleaching surveys and 1077 mortality surveys. (0.17 MB PDF)

Animation of the development of thermal stress during the 2005 Caribbean bleaching event, measured using NOAA Coral Reef Watch Degree Heating Week product from 4 June 2005 to 14 February 2006 with a pause during the peak of the event at 28 October 2005. (5.54 MB TIF)

Comparison of bleaching survey methods. All observations of percent coral colonies (gray circles) and cover (black diamonds) are plotted versus observed Degree Heating Week (DHW). Linear regressions for colonies (gray line) and cover (black line) were highly significant (cover slope = 3.91, intercept = 19.99, df = 212, p<0.0001, r2 = 0.26; colonies...

Locations of 2575 bleaching surveys submitted from sites across the greater Caribbean region. Colors denote number of surveys at each of the 1212 sites. See Table S1 for location details. (0.18 MB TIF)

INTRODUCTION AND sETTING The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is comprised of a number of islands in the northern Caribbean, including the island of Puerto Rico and offshore islands such as Culebra, Vieques, Monito, and Desecheo (Figure 3.1). The following information adds to the comprehensive overview of Puertorrican reefs provided in the previous edit...

Poorly implemented beach renourishment activities and increasing raw sewage pollution from local storm sewers and other non-point sources have significantly impacted coral reef communities at the candidate Vega Baja Submarine Gardens Natural Reserve, Puerto Rico. There have been recurrent violations to legal water turbidity and microbiological wate...

Human fecal contamination of coral reefs is a major cause of concern. Conventional methods used to monitor microbial water quality cannot be used to discriminate between different fecal pollution sources. Fecal coliforms, enterococci, and human-specific Bacteroides (HF183, HF134), general Bacteroides-Prevotella (GB32), and Clostridium coccoides gro...

Puerto Rico, the easternmost island (18°15' N and 66°30' W) of the Greater Antilles, is about 50 km wide and 180 km long on its east/west axis, and has a coastline of 1,384 km including the adjacent islands of Vieques, Culebra, Desecheo, and Mona (Fig. 9.1). Puerto Rico is a “high” island with a central mountain range running east/west with peak el...

Non-point source sewage pollution represents a major threat to coral reefs. Impacts are typically associated with chronic eutrophication, water turbidity, and microbes potentially pathogenic to corals. Sewage pollution can produce variable system-and species-specific responses, as well as cascading direct and indirect effects, that could result in...

Target fishery species have been traditionally used as indicators of compliance and management success in no-take marine protected areas (MPAs). However, this approach has the limitation of ignoring the effects that no-take MPAs may have on the functional role of fishes at the community and ecosystem levels. The first objective of this study was to...

This chapter provides a synopsis of scientific research undertaken in characterization of coral reef systems from Puerto Rico. It includes a data set on the sessile-benthic community structure and coral taxonomy from 52 reefs surveyed with quantitative sampling protocols over a 15 year period. It analyzes the data in the context of the contrasting...