Coral Reef Resilience Research and Management – Past, Present and Future!

Abstract

This workshop’s overarching purpose was for recent NOAA grantees working on resilience-related projects to: 1) meet and discuss synergies and complementarities among existing and planned projects and, 2) identify high priority next steps in resilience research and application in management.

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doi:10.7289/V5VQ30M9

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Coral Reef Resilience Research and Management –
Past, Present and Future!
Workshop Report
Maynard, J., B. Parker, R. Beeden, J. Tamelander, P. McGowan, L.
Gramer, S. Heron, M. Kendall, S. McKagan, E. McLeod, K. Oleson,
and S. Pittman
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Ocean Service
Office for Coastal Management
Coral Reef Conservation Program
May 2015
NOAA Technical Memorandum CRCP 20
United States Department of National Oceanic and National Ocean Service
Commerce Atmospheric Administration
Penny S. Pritzker Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan Dr. Russell Callender
Secretary Administrator Assistant Administrator
doi:10.7289/V5VQ30M9

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REPORT AUTHORS:
J. Maynard
1
, B. Parker
2
, R. Beeden
3
, J. Tamelander
4
, P. McGowan
5
,
L. Gramer
6
, S. Heron
7
, M.
Kendall
8
, S. McKagan
9
, E. McLeod
10
, K. Oleson
11
,
S. Pittman
8, 12
1 – Marine Applied Research Center, Wilmington, NC, USA
2 – The Baldwin Group on contract with NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program, Silver
Spring, MD, USA
3 – Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville, QLD, AUSTRALIA
4 – United Nations Environment Program, Bangkok, THAILAND
5 – The Nature Conservancy, Seattle, WA, USA
6 – NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Miami, FL, USA
7 – NOAA Coral Reef Watch, College Park, MD, USA
8 – NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Biogeography Branch, Silver Spring,
MD, USA
9 – NOAA Fisheries and Pacific Islands Regional Office, Saipan, CNMI, USA
10 – The Nature Conservancy, Austin, TX, USA
11 – University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa, HI, USA
12 – Marine Institute, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK
CITATION:
Maynard, J., B. Parker, R. Beeden, J. Tamelander, P. McGowan, L. Gramer, S. Heron, M.
Kendall, S. McKagan, E. McLeod, K. Oleson, and S. Pittman. 2015. Coral Reef Resilience
Research and Management – Past, Present and Future: Workshop Report. Silver Spring, MD:
NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. NOAA Technical Memorandum CRCP 20. 47pp.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
For more information about this report or to request a copy, please contact Britt Parker at
NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program at 301-713-1193 or britt.parker@noaa.gov or visit
www.coralreef.noaa.gov.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Travel and meeting costs for the workshop were primarily supported by funding from the NOAA
Coral Reef Conservation Program. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, The Nature
Conservancy, and the United Nations Environmental Programme supported attendance costs for
representatives from those organisations. Thank you to Chris Caldow (NOAA) and Paul
Marshall (Reef Ecologic) for providing technical review of the document.
DISCLAIMER:
The contents of this report are solely the opinions of the authors and do not constitute a statement
of policy, decision, or position on behalf of NOAA or the U.S. Government. Mention of trade
names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for their use
by the United States government.
Cover Photo Credit: Darla White (Hawaiʻi Department of Aquatic Resources)
Group Photo Credit: Roger Beeden (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority)
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Table of Contents
Workshop Attendees ....................................................................................................................... 5
Background ..................................................................................................................................... 7
Workshop goals .............................................................................................................................. 9
Meeting structure and discussion themes ....................................................................................... 9
High priority next steps ................................................................................................................. 10
Participant feedback ...................................................................................................................... 13
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 14
Appendix 1 – Workshop Agenda .................................................................................................. 16
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Appendix 2 - Feedback from Workshop Attendees ...................................................................... 19
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Appendix 3 – Topics for New Case Studies within TNC RR Toolkit .......................................... 22
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Appendix 4 – Overviews of Theme Discussions and Next Steps ................................................. 24
Theme 1: Mapping Environmental Disturbance/Exposure ........................................................... 24
Theme 2: Field-Based Resilience Assessments (includes Herbivorous Fish) .............................. 29
Theme 3: Connectivity .................................................................................................................. 33
Theme 4: Land-based Sources of Pollution .................................................................................. 37
Theme 5: Managers Use of Resilience Information and Reporting ............................................. 42
Workshop Attendees
The table below lists all attendees of the workshop.
Last
First
Affiliation
Anders
Emma
Hawaiʻi Department of Aquatic Resources
Beeden
Roger
Australian Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
Conklin
Eric
The Nature Conservancy
Delevaux
Jade
University of Hawaiʻi - Manoa
Donovan
Mary
University of Hawaiʻi - Manoa
Gramer
Lew
NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
Harper
Doug
NOAA Office for Coastal Management
Heenan
Adel
NOAA PIFSC Coral Reef Ecosystems Division
Heron
Scott
NOAA Coral Reef Watch
Johnston
Lyza
CNMI Bureau of Environmental & Coastal Quality
Kendall
Matt
NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
Biogeography Branch
Kosaki
Randy
NOAA Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
Lameier
Mike
NOAA NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office
MacGowan
Petra
The Nature Conservancy
Martinez
Jonathon
NOAA Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine
Sanctuary
Maynard
Jeff
Marine Applied Research Center

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McKagan
Steve
NOAA NMFS Pacific Islands Regional Office
McLeod
Lizzie
The Nature Conservancy
Oleson
Kirsten
University of Hawaiʻi - Manoa
Parker
Britt
NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program
Pittman
Simon
NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
Biogeography Branch
Rosinski
Anne
Hawaiʻi Department of Aquatic Resources
Schumacher
Brett
NOAA PIFSC Coral Reef Ecosystems Division
Stamoulis
Kosta
University of Hawaiʻi - Manoa
Tamelander
Jerker
United Nations Environmental Programme
Teneva
Lida
Conservation International
Vargas-Angel
Bernardo
NOAA PIFSC Coral Reef Ecosystems Division
White
Darla
Hawaiʻi Department of Aquatic Resources
Attendees of the Coral Reef Resilience Research and Management Workshop. Photo taken
November 4, 2014 in Honolulu, Hawai’i.!
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Workshop Summary
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Background
Each year, subject to the availability of funds, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration Coral Reef Conservation Program (NOAA CRCP) awards grants for applied
research that informs conservation and management of coral reefs within the U.S. and abroad.
During recent years, project funds have been awarded to scientists and managers working to
increase our understanding of reef resilience and of the application of resilience thinking in
management decision-making. This workshop’s overarching purpose was for recent grantees
working on resilience-related projects to meet and discuss synergies and complementarities
among existing and planned projects and identify high priority next steps in resilience research
and application in management.
Resilience is a term and concept used in many fields and contexts. Resilience has many
definitions in the scientific literature, even when it is used specifically in the context of coral reef
ecosystems. Standish and coauthors (2014) recognized that the concept of resilience, especially
as it has grown in popularity, has become vague, varied and difficult to quantify. These authors
attempted to clarify the concept from the ecological perspective in definition and its application
to ecosystem management (see summary table below).
Ecological References
Definition
Hollings, 1973
Defines resilience as the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate
disturbance without switching to a qualitatively different state that
is controlled by a different set of processes (often referred to as
ecological resilience).
Pimm 1984
Defines resilience in terms of the time taken to return to the pre-
disturbances state (often referred to engineering resilience;
recovery)
Coral Reef References
Definition
Hoegh-Guldberg et al
2007
Defines coral reef resilience to disturbance in terms of recovery
time (engineering resilience)
Hughes et al. 2007
Defines coral reef resilience to disturbance in terms of its capacity
to absorb recurrent disturbances or shocks and adapt to change
without fundamentally switching to an alternative steady state
(ecological resilience)
Côte & Darling 2010
McClanahan et al. 2012
Define coral reef resilience as a two part process of resistance and
recovery (involves both engineering and ecological resilience)*
*Note that a recent publication by Mumby et al 2014 also discusses these two forms of resilience
in the ecological literature and their pros and cons noting that ecological resilience is ideal
where an ecosystem risks losing its ability to recover and driving itself to an undesirable state
while engineering resilience is useful where ecosystem recovery is commonplace.
Operationally, from a coral reef management perspective, resilience is the capacity of a reef to
resist and/or recover in the future given its probable exposure regime and to maintain provision

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of ecosystem goods and services (Mumby et al. 2007). The first half of this definition speaks to
ecological and engineering resilience and the second to the strong links between ecological and
social resilience, especially in areas where communities are dependent on reefs for food security
and livelihoods. It is this combination of factors that is of interest to the Coral Program.
For the purposes of this report we also use the term ‘resilience-based management’ to mean the
application of resilience theory, thinking and tools to deliver ecosystem-based management
outcomes into the future. Used in this way resilience-based management serves as an approach
that managers can take to evaluate whether existing or new actions are likely to maintain
ecosystems and the goods and services that they provide as the climate changes. Our intention in
using the term resilience-based management is to serve as a practical ‘short-hand’; to reduce
terminology confusion (see Mumby et al. 2014) while highlighting the vital importance of
considering future conditions and consequences when making contemporary management
decisions. Our use of the term is consistent with its use in Bestelmeyer & Briske (2012) in
regards to rangeland management in the United States. “We argue that progression from steady-
state management to ecosystem management has served the rangeland profession well, but that
further development toward resilience-based management is required to ensure that ecosystem
services are sustained in an era of rapid change. Resilience-based management embraces the
inevitability of change and emphasizes that management should seek to guide change to benefit
society.” The key differences in steady-state, ecosystem, and resilience-based management are
summarized in the table below (Bestelmeyer and Briske, 2012). More information on resilience
based approaches to managing coral reef ecosystems can be found in Appendix 4 in the Theme 5
summary (pgs. 40-44).
Table 2. Seven distinguishing attributes of steady state, ecosystem, and resilience-based
management models (modified from Chapin et al. 2009).
Steady state
management
Ecosystem management
Resilience-based
management
Ecological models
Succession-
retrogression
State-and-transition,
rangeland health
Multiple social-ecological
systems/novel ecosystems
Reference condition
Historic climax plant
community
Historic climax plant
community, including
historical range of variation
Landscapes with maximum
options for ecosystem
services
Role of humans
Use ecosystems
Part of ecosystems
Direct trajectories of
ecosystem change
Ecosystem services
Meat and fiber products
Several ecosystem services
Options for diverse
ecosystem services
Management goals
Sustain maximum yield
of commodities
Sustain multiple uses
Sustain capacity of social-
ecological systems to support
human well-being
Science-
management
linkages
Top-down from
management agencies
Top-down from
management agencies
Multiscaled social learning
institutions
Knowledge systems
Management
experience and
agricultural experiments
Multidisciplinary science
and ecological experiments
Collaborative groups,
spatially references,
updatable database systems

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The Coral Program Goals and Objectives (2010-2015) address three primary threats to coral reef
ecosystems: climate change impacts, fishing impacts, and the impacts of land-based sources of
pollution. The first Climate Change goal is to: “Increase coral reef resilience to climate change
and ocean acidification through effective management strategies.” The CRCP has funded
projects working to meet this goal in a range of applied research fields that relate to resilience,
data product development, and assessments to inform management decisions. As examples,
projects have been funded to enhance our understanding of connectivity among reefs and reef
areas, produce historical analyses and climate model projections of climate-related threats, and
undertake field-based assessments of resilience potential.
! Workshop goals
This workshop represents the first gathering of resilience grantees and coral reef managers
funded by NOAA CRCP. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), The
Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP)
provided additional support for this workshop. The primary workshop goals were:
1. To bring together NOAA scientists, external partners and managers who are currently
engaged in assessing and managing reefs for resilience in a changing climate to create the
opportunity for face-to-face dialogue and review recent advances.
2. Identify priority research, products, and collaborative projects, and make plans to
advance this body of work over coming years in direct partnership with coral reef
managers.
A secondary goal was to: ensure that work across CRCP and partner programs is complementary
and that efforts are contributing to and being informed by efforts in other parts of the world.
Meeting structure and discussion themes
The workshop was held November 4-6, 2014 in Honolulu, Hawai’i and was attended by 28
scientists and managers from nearly as many management agencies, universities, and
conservation organizations. During the first day of the workshop, CRCP grantees conducting
resilience research, managers, and program leads from TNC, GBRMPA and UNEP all delivered
presentations describing project results, ongoing research, activities and future plans (see full
agenda in Appendix 1). Facilitated discussions were the focus of the second and third days of the
workshop with 2-3 hours devoted to each of five themes. These themes were collaboratively set
with participants prior to the workshop to cover both existing research funded by the CRCP and
new research opportunities and management needs. The five themes were:
• Theme 1: Mapping Environmental Disturbance/Exposure - Historic and projected
future exposure of coral reefs to thermal stress/bleaching, cyclones and ocean
acidification.
• Theme 2: Field Based Resilience Assessments (includes Herbivorous Fish) - Field
and desktop-based analyses of relative resilience potential resulting in maps and informed
conservation planning.
• Theme 3: Connectivity - State of science in developing high-resolution connectivity
maps in coral reef areas.

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• Theme 4: Land-based Sources of Pollution - Current approaches to map and assess
LBSP, run-off, and dilution once in the marine environment.
• Theme 5: Managers Use of Resilience Assessments and Reporting - Using a dynamic
understanding of reef condition and exposure to target/inform management actions and
reef report cards and outlooks.
During each theme discussion, two session leaders reviewed the research (themes 1-4) or
management activity (theme 5) and facilitated a discussion driven towards identifying next steps.
By ‘next steps’ we mean tractable needed actions and activities that will advance the thinking
and research and/or the application of research within these areas by managers. Our facilitated
discussions are summarized in Appendix 4 for each of the five themes. For each theme, a 1-2
page overview of the research area and recent research led by workshop attendees is described
first, followed by the identified key next steps. The highest priority next steps for each theme are
summarized below. A sixth crosscutting theme, Training and Capacity Building, was also
discussed during each of the theme sessions and during a concluding session.
In planning the workshop, it was our intent to also have a theme on social ecological resilience.
We all recognize there are key linkages between coral reef ecosystems and dependent human
communities, as well as linkages between reef health and the resilience of coastal communities.
However, scheduling conflicts and funding did not allow for key social scientists and partners to
be attend the workshop. Identifying priority next steps for a ‘Social-Ecological Resilience’ theme
was identified as a priority next for a future workshop.
! High priority next steps
The key next steps summarized here were identified as high priority because they meet one or
more of the following criteria: critically needed and foundational to important steps that will
follow, actionable now, or possible with limited resources. The identified next steps will advance
resilience science and application and take the form of activities such as: developing specific
data products, guidance for managers on assessments and use of information in decision-making,
and case studies to build an evidence base for resilience based management. Many of these high
priority key next steps will require new funding and partnerships. Workshop participants have
already identified some activities that are underway as part of existing projects or that can be
achieved with existing funding. Attendees estimated total project costs for the great majority of
these to be around $50K U.S. or less; we use * to denote next steps likely to be more resource-
intensive. The other next steps identified for each of the five working themes can be found at the
conclusion of the 2-4 page theme summaries presented in Appendix 4.
Theme 1 – Mapping Environmental Disturbance/Exposure
1. Plan for the NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) website to become a ‘one-stop-shop’ for
all information related to near-real-time, historic and projected future exposure of coral
reefs to environmental disturbances. This needs to involve presenting links within the
website to all other relevant products and ensuring that guidance for managers is
available for all types of information made available.

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2. Develop guidance for managers on how to use exposure data layers in spatial planning
following the development of a template such that guidance is complete and consistent
for every spatial data layer presented on the NOAA CRW site.
3. *Produce statistically downscaled climate model projections of global bleaching and
annual bleaching conditions.
4. Develop a webpage within the NOAA Coral Reef Watch website that makes all historic
and projected future exposure data layers available as raster grids and/or netcdf files to
facilitate use in spatial planning exercises with guidance on how to combine exposure
layers.
Theme 2 – Field-based resilience assessments (includes herbivorous fish)
1. Develop guidance with real world examples for all parts of the process of undertaking a
resilience assessment and using assessment results to target management actions and
inform conservation planning. This guidance needs to include: selecting indicators, using
any existing data in the assessment, analyzing the data, presenting and reporting on the
results, and descriptions of options for completing an assessment at different resource
levels.
Theme 3 – Connectivity
1. Define simple and inexpensive ways to establish a basic understanding of larval retention
and connectivity potential and develop guidance for these approaches.
2. Seek to define “how much connectivity is enough” to maintain genetic versus
demographic connectivity. Defining such values should ultimately replace present studies
that only describe relative connectivity strength among locations.
3. *Refine regionally specific guidance (based on 1 and 2) on spatial density and size
for area based management initiatives where intensive circulation modeling/studies or
genetic connectivity data are not available. This goes beyond traditional efforts to show
linkages between MPAs by expanding the analysis to include linkages between all types
of place based management, including but not limited to: priority watersheds, restricted
areas, LMMAs, MPAs, high use and high enforcement areas, etc.
4. Develop case studies that describe: 1) how to include connectivity information to
expand/enhance field-based assessments of ecological resilience, and 2) the actions
managers can take once connectivity at any or all scales is better understood.
Theme 4 – Land-based sources of pollution

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1. Compile a list of evidence-based water quality standards with exceedance threshold
values for key stressors that are relevant to coral reefs (e.g., toxins, sediment, bacteria,
salinity, total max daily loadings). Multiple threshold values may need to be defined to
correspond to multiple measurement types (e.g., in situ, remotely-sensed). This list needs
to be made publicly accessible and a group or groups needs to be accountable for keeping
the list updated.
2. Consistent and coordinated reporting on water quality status and trends for parameters
that are meaningful to coral reef health (see above) are required.
3. *Write a review of the tools and approaches for spatial modeling of land-based sources of
pollution to produce a concise guide with estimates of resource requirements, case studies
and links to required software.
4. *Regional and global studies are needed to examine the linkage between the following:
1) historical changes in land cover, 2) ocean color/water quality, and 3) coral reef
condition. This will inform ‘what if’ scenarios to help communicate the consequences of
land cover change for coral reef health.
5. *More evidence is needed to assess the effectiveness of spatial proxies in representing the
distribution of threats from watershed to marine water quality and coral reef condition.
For example, direct measurements of water quality and benthic communities are needed
(water samples and ocean color data, dispersal models) to link the landscape models,
such as a Landscape Development Intensity index to coral condition.
Theme 5 - Managers Use of Resilience Assessments and Reporting
1. Define ‘resilience-based management’ in the context of ecosystem-based
management/coral reef management and communicate why it will enable managers and
policy makers to deliver conservation and ecosystem service outcomes in a changing
climate.
2. Develop a case study driven evidence base to support the use of resilience assessments
and resilience-based management actions.
3. Develop guidelines for operationalizing resilience-based management.
4. Describe how integrated monitoring and evaluation is a requirement for effective
resilience-based management and how managers can adapt their current monitoring
programs to inform resilience-based management.
Theme 6 – Training and Capacity Building
The overarching conclusions from our cross-cutting theme discussion on training and capacity
building are as follows: 1) more and better guidance is required for the application of resilience

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science from all of the topics (themes 1-4) in management, which needs to include reporting and
information dissemination (theme 5), and 2) virtual guidance needs to continue to be
complemented with face-to-face training and mentorship opportunities, especially for managers
working in remote areas. The consensus was that the new guidance should mostly be presented
within TNC’s Reef Resilience Toolkit (www.reefresilience.org) with attribution to the source of
the materials and that development of the guidance requires expanding upon existing content. In
addition, there may be instances where guidance may need to be prepared as stand-alone
products and/or publications to best serve certain audiences or end user groups. The Reef
Resilience Toolkit, Forum, and Online Courses are a very well-known, respected source of the
latest scientific information distilled for coral reef managers, the content of which is driven my
manager’s needs. A range of case studies were identified (see Appendix 3) that would present
complete examples with lessons learned of the application of the new thinking and research
discussed during the five main theme sessions. New guidance can also include new pages within
the toolkit, more video-based summaries of toolkit content and case studies, as well as tutorials
and updated relevant reference lists (as in our Appendix 4). Many attendees agreed to work with
TNC’s Reef Resilience Program to develop new guidance during the coming year; these
agreements and plans can be seen as a major outcome of the workshop (see feedback within
Appendix 3). The high priority next steps are:
1. Keep guidance content current within key delivery mechanisms like TNC’s Reef
Resilience toolkit, including most relevant tools and resources and lists current references
for various working themes (such as the five covered during this workshop).
2. Undertake a comprehensive review of past and current programs that provide guidance
and train coral reef managers. The review should result in a report that describes
strengths and weaknesses and provides recommendations as to what kinds of guidance
and training programs are needed by managers. The review also needs to identify key
stumbling blocks to management actions and what the key features of these programs
should be both with respect to content and coordination (see also step 3).
3. Organize a workshop following on from step 2 to review and finalize the
recommendations and discuss considerations related to sharing costs and coordination
efforts across programs and agencies.
It should be noted that as with all activities suggested within the workshop report, coral reef
managers and those that are users of the data products, guidance, etc. are an integral part of any
team moving forward. Given the goal of products to be tailored to management application and
the results of resilience assessments to be used in decision making, scientist-manager
partnerships are imperative to this process.
Participant feedback
Workshop participants were overwhelmingly positive about their experience during the meeting
(see comments from participants in Appendix 2). Participants commented at length about how
useful and productive the meeting was and expressed commitments to partner on undertaking
and delivering on all of the identified high priority next steps (see above). Participants were

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really enthusiastic about meeting new collaborators, excited to share the results of recent work,
and especially liked that the meeting focused on the identification of tractable next steps for us to
collaborate on undertaking and delivering on. Participants also mentioned that the discussions
provided valuable overviews of new science, involved identifying new ways to communicate and
share plans, and were highly relevant to local management of their reef resources.
Conclusions
The workshop chairs and attendees all considered the workshop to be a spectacular success and
considered the required investment of time and energy to be very well spent. Everyone that
attended the workshop: met someone they had exchanged emails with but had never seen, was
exposed to work they had not heard of or had not fully understood prior to the meeting, had their
perspective changed in an important way about something they have been working on related to
resilience and its application during recent years, or made commitments to each other and to
managers to help advance resilience-related research and its application in management.
Speaking to the last point, participants extensively discussed how rapidly resilience research and
its application is advancing and that, as a consequence, we all and our programs have to be
adaptive and flexible as well as continue to work highly collaboratively. Collaboration is
especially important in today’s funding climate and will certainly be required to complete the
~25 high priority next steps identified just above. All of these high priority next steps are
actionable now and needed and most are not resource-intensive.
Coral reef managers and scientists working in developing countries attended a workshop
convened by UNEP under a similar theme entitled Scientific Workshop on Coral Reef Resilience
in Planning and Decision-support Frameworks: Towards Greater Use of Reef Resilience Data in
Planning and Management (April 2014 in Phuket, Thailand). Many of the high priority next
steps identified in this workshop were also identified in Phuket (report available through UNEP).
The high degree of overlap in these two lists of next steps emphasizes the urgency and
importance of the identified next steps and gives us confidence that advances that are made
would be applied in both the developed and developing world. Key next steps identified in
Phuket included the following actions, to be pursued through collaboration with relevant
partners:
• Communication and policy outreach elaborating the case for using coral reef resilience
science in planning and management, and how it can strengthen ecosystem management
and ICZM;
• Guidance to support application of resilience science in planning and management, going
beyond MPAs and considering cross-sectoral planning processes such as marine spatial
planning. This may include guidance to resilience indicators and use of existing monitoring
and other data in resilience assessments;
• Work towards enhanced access to existing large scale exposure and predictive resilience
data, as well as guidance on its use;
• Pilot implementation to demonstrate the use of resilience science in planning and
management processes at different scales, generating case studies that can be shared and
replicated;

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• A follow up workshop to review progress, share experiences and support further
development.
Attendees intend to undertake delivering on as many of the next steps as possible during the
coming two years. Total progress made and progress rates will depend, as always, on the kinds
and levels of support made available as in-kind contributions and through competitively awarded
grants and contracts. To this end, participants agreed to continue collaborating on both acquiring
resources and identifying cost-sharing opportunities. Most importantly, representatives from all
of the major programs confirmed they are dedicated to supporting applied research over the
coming years that will be guided by the identified high priority next steps to support resilience
based management. The strength and consistency among attendees of this commitment
demonstrates the value for all programs present of the NOAA CRCP having taken the lead on
coordinating the workshop. Indeed, attendees and the broader coral reef management community
are already reaping the benefits of having met to discuss potential synergies among recently
funded projects. As examples: connectivity information will be built into soon-to-be-released
field assessments of reef resilience in the west Pacific, information on historic and projected
future exposure to thermal stress is being built into spatial conservation planning in Indonesia,
forward-looking reef reporting templates are being collaboratively developed, and the merit of
various proxies for water quality are being reviewed to increase rigor and use within both
resilience assessments and watershed management planning. These are only four from among a
dozen or more other similar examples from the networking and discussions held during the
workshop.
Attendees agreed that a similar workshop needs to be coordinated every 2-3 years and that the
next workshop could coincide with the 2016 ICRS in Honolulu. Further, an email list-serve of
attendees was created enabling everyone to stay in touch. Britt Parker of NOAA CRCP will
request summaries of projects and questions/concerns from all attendees every 6 months and will
work with attendees to produce a brief summary. These 6-monthly summaries will help the
NOAA CRCP and the other major programs present such as TNC, GBRMPA, and UNEP to
continue to identify synergies among projects and thus reduce overlap and maximize
complementarity and collaboration.
References
Bestelmeyer, BT, & Briske, DD. (2012). Grand challenges for resilience-based management of
rangelands. Rangeland Ecology & Management, 65(6), 654-663.
Mumby, PJ, Hastings, A Edwards, HJ. (2007) Thresholds and the resilience of Caribbean coral
reefs. Nature 450:98-101.
Mumby, PJ, Chollett, I, Bozec, YM, & Wolff, NH. (2014). Ecological resilience, robustness and
vulnerability: how do these concepts benefit ecosystem management? Current Opinion in
Environmental Sustainability, 7, 22-27.
Standish, JS et al. (2014) Resilience in ecology: Abstraction, distraction or where the action is?
Biological Conservation 177:43-51.

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Appendix 1 – Workshop Agenda
The following goals, agenda and workshop themes formed the guiding structure for workshop
discussions.
Coral Reef Resilience Research and Management – Past, Present and Future!
NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program
November 4-6
Hawaiʻi Prince Hotel Waikiki (100 Holomana Street)
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi
Workshop Goals:
• To bring together NOAA scientists, external partners and managers who are currently
engaged in assessing and managing reefs for resilience in a changing climate to create the
opportunity for face-to-face dialogue and review recent advances.
• Identify priority research, products, and collaborative projects, and make plans to advance
this body of work over coming years in direct partnership with coral reef managers.
• Ensure that work across CRCP and partner programs is complementary and that efforts are
contributing to and being informed by efforts in other parts of the world.
TUES - 4 NOV 2014
Haleakala/Kilauea Meeting room
TIME
Session
8:45 – 9:00
REGISTRATION, SIGN-IN AND COFFEE
SESSION 1
INTRODUCTIONS & MEETING OVERVIEW
9:00 – 9:30
WELCOME
• Participant introductions (Name, Affiliation) – Britt Parker
• Meeting Overview and Housekeeping – Britt Parker/Jeff Maynard
• Questions?
SESSION 2
PROGRAM OVERVIEWS
9:30 – 10:45
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION
• NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program – Britt Parker (10 min)
• TNC Reef Resilience Program – Petra McGowan (15 min)
• UNEP Coral Reef Unit – Jerker Tamelander (15 min)
• Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – Roger Beeden (15
min)
• Oceans Tipping Points Project – Mary Donovan (10 min)
10:45 – 11:00
BREAK
SESSION 3
CURRENT WORK ACROSS THE 6 WORKING MEETING
THEMES
11:00 – 12:20
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION

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TUES - 4 NOV 2014
Haleakala/Kilauea Meeting room
TIME
Session
• Thermal Stress History and Projected Future Exposure – Scott
Heron/Jeff Maynard (20 min)
• Overview of CNMI Field-based Resilience Assessment – Jeff
Maynard/Steve McKagan (20 min)
• Herbivores and some results from the Kahekili Herbivore Fisheries
Management Area – Adel Heenan (20 min)
• NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Division Data Informing
Assessments – Bernardo Vargas-Angel/Brett Schumacher (20 min)
12:20 – 1:15
LUNCH
1:15– 2:35
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION
• USVI Reef Resilience Framework – Simon Pittman (20 min)
• LBSP in the Oceans Tipping Point project – Kirsten Oleson (20
min)
• Connectivity – Matt Kendall (20 min)
• TNC Training and Capacity Building for Reef Resilience – Lizzie
McLeod (20 min)
2:35 – 2:45
BREAK
2:45 – 3:15
PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION
• Dynamic Understanding of Exposure to Disturbances and Reef
Health Informing Resilience-based Management & Citizen Science
– Roger Beeden (30 min)
SESSION 4
Q&A, THEME WORKING SESSION INTRODUCTION, AND
WHAT’S NEXT?
3:15 – 4:30
DISCUSSION
• Follow up Q and A for Presenters
• Introduction of Theme Breakout Sessions and Schedule for Days 2
and 3
5:00
HAPPY HOUR AND DINNER (HULA GIRL GRILL – 2335
KALAKAUA AVE WAIKIKI ABOVE DUKE’S)
WED - 5 NOV 2014
Haleakala/Kilauea Meeting room
TIME
Session
8:30 – 8:40
WELCOME AND DIRECTIONS TO BREAK OUT SESSIONS
SESSION 5
THEME 1: MAPPING ENVIRONMENTAL DISTURBANCE/EXPOSURE -
HISTORIC AND PROJECTED FUTURE EXPOSURE OF CORAL REEFS TO
THERMAL STRESS/BLEACHING, CYCLONES AND OCEAN ACIDIFICATION.
THEME 2: FIELD BASED RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTS (INCLUDES
HERBIVOROUS FISH) - FIELD AND DESKTOP-BASED ANALYSES OF
RELATIVE RESILIENCE POTENTIAL RESULTING IN MAPS AND INFORMED
CONSERVATION PLANNING.
8:40 – 10:10
Theme 1: Mapping Environmental Disturbance/Exposure – Scott
Heron/Jeff Maynard

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WED - 5 NOV 2014
Haleakala/Kilauea Meeting room
TIME
Session
10:10 – 10:30
BREAK
10:30 – 12:00
Theme 2: Field-based Resilience Assessments – Jeff Maynard/Steve
McKagan
12:00 – 1:00
LUNCH
SESSION 6
THEME 3: CONNECTIVITY - STATE OF SCIENCE IN DEVELOPING HIGH-
RESOLUTION CONNECTIVITY MAPS IN CORAL REEF AREAS.
THEME 4: LAND-BASED SOURCES OF POLLUTION - CURRENT
APPROACHES TO MAP AND ASSESS LBSP, RUN-OFF, AND DILUTION ONCE
IN THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT.
1:00 – 2:30
Theme 3: Connectivity – Matt Kendall/Lew Gramer
2:30-2:45
BREAK
2:45 – 4:15
Theme 4: LBSP – Simon Pittman/Kirsten Oleson
4:15 - 4:30
WRAP UP AND CLOSING
THURS -6 NOV
2014
Hakone Restaurant
TIME
Session
8:30 – 8:40
WELCOME AND DIRECTIONS TO BREAK OUT SESSIONS
8:40 – 9:00
Presentation: Outlook Reporting – Paul Marshall (given by Jeff
Maynard) (15 min)
SESSION 7
THEME 5: MANAGERS USE OF RESILIENCE ASSESSMENT & REPORTING
- USING A DYNAMIC UNDERSTANDING OF REEF CONDITION AND
EXPOSURE TO TARGET/INFORM MANAGEMENT ACTIONS AND REEF
REPORT CARDS AND OUTLOOKS.
THEME 6: TRAINING AND CAPACITY BUILDING - EFFORTS TO BUILD THE
CAPACITY OF MANAGERS TO UNDERTAKE RESILIENCE-BASED
MANAGEMENT AND STAKEHOLDERS/CITIZEN SCIENTISTS TO
PARTICIPATE.
9:00 – 10:30
Theme 5: Managers Use of Resilience Assessments & Reporting –
Roger Beeden/Britt Parker
10:30 – 10:45
BREAK
10:45 – 12:15
Theme 6: Training and Capacity Building – Petra McGowan/Lizzie
McLeod
SESSION 8
MEETING CONCLUSION
12:15 – 12:30
• Meeting Conclusion and Next Steps/Action Items – Jeff Maynard/Britt
Parker
• Resilience Song – Performed by Scott Heron
12:30 – 1:30
LUNCH
1:30 – 3:00
MEETING ROOM OPEN FOR PIS AND PARTNERS TO MEET ON
SPECIFIC PROJECTS
3:00
BRIEF MEETING SESSION LEADS (LOCATION TBD)

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Appendix 2 - Feedback from Workshop Attendees
!
Feedback on the workshop is provided below from attendees that offered summaries of their
experience during the workshop and associated evening meetings (presented in no particular
order).
Darla White of the Hawaiʻi Division of Aquatic Resources – “This meeting was very beneficial
to me on many levels, both as a manager practitioner and field scientist. This meeting was a
super download/exchange of updated information on resilience, relevant resources, upcoming
releases, and recent experiences and lessons learned. All of the work presented and discussions
is relevant to how we manage reefs in Hawaiʻi to support resilience. I was able to talk with
several people that will help me to undertake or assist with resilience assessments on the reefs of
Maui and to form new partnerships and expand my network.’
Dr. Scott Heron of NOAA Coral Reef Watch – “I found that bringing together key people
working in the area of resilience for application in coral reef management was timely and
informative for my personal work program. We identified key next steps related to my
development of graphics and tools that describe historic exposure of coral reef areas to thermal
stress events. I also enjoyed and benefited from our discussions on tractable ways for the group
of applied research scientists and managers working in this area to communicate and share
ideas and plans.”
Roger Beeden of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – “This workshop provided a
valuable overview of the science underpinning the resilience -based management of coral reefs,
and examples of resilience assessments of coral reefs. There was excellent, robust and practical
discussion of how resilience theory can be translated into practice in the short and long term,
which resulted in the identification of tractable next steps. I learned of several examples of the
application of resilience thinking from other parts of the world that are going to be directly
relevant to my day to day work and to ongoing refinement of the GBRMPA’s strategic objectives.
I also found it very helpful to discuss the collaborative ways in which resilience-based
management can be defined for decision makers, managers and stakeholders and how such
information is and can be delivered across multiple platforms. Ongoing collaborations among
this group will help us share the results of GBRMPA’s work with the global community of
practitioners.”
Dr. Kirsten Oleson of the University of Hawaiʻi-Manoa – “The discussion between managers
and scientists was detailed and pragmatic. As a scientist interested in producing results that
managers can use, I found the managers' perspectives and insights about the products they need
and the modes of delivery very helpful. I enjoyed contributing to discussions that resulted in new
ideas of how we can collectively deliver management-relevant products effectively.”
Dr. Matt Kendall of the NOAA Biogeography Branch – “It was terrific to hear during the
meeting how my personal research focus fits with the range of other applied research being
conducted in the area of applying resilience thinking to coral reef management and conservation
efforts. My mission in attending was accomplished in that I met new collaborators and identified
several promising collaborative projects. As examples, I will be pursuing plans to integrate some

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of my transport simulation results with the field-based resilience assessment results from that
NOAA CRCP project. I will also be working with groups like TNC to provide information on
low-tech ways to get an initial understanding of connectivity. Lastly, I am looking forward to
working more closely with UH on studies of reef fish connectivity in Hawaiʻi.
Steve McKagan of NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Regional Office – “I learned a great deal
about resilience as a concept and about the diversity of ways in which people are applying
resilience thinking in management efforts. I also met several researchers and managers that I
will collaborate with over the coming years in advancing work in the Micronesia region. I
enjoyed sharing some of the recent results of our field-based assessments of resilience from
CNMI and our plans to share that work in a peer-reviewed paper and project report, both of
which will benefit from insights gained during the meeting.”
Dr. Brett Schumacher of NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Division – “The most valuable part of
the meeting for me was meeting people that I previously only knew as names from emails.
Meeting discussions resulted in the generation of new project ideas that I will be working on
with some of the other attendees. I especially benefited from hearing about the state of work in
research areas like connectivity and land-based sources of pollution that I needed to understand
more comprehensively for my own work on Hawaiʻi-based resilience assessments and spatial
planning.”
Dr. Jerker Tamelander of UNEP - “I found it important and extremely useful that so many
tractable next steps for members of this working group were identified during the meeting
discussions. I was pleased to see that several of the identified highest-priority next steps were
also described as priorities by remote area and developing country managers that attended a
resilience workshop I chaired in Phuket earlier this year. These meetings provide a great
foundation upon which UNEP’s coral reef program can now build. I am looking forward to
following up with many of the other attendees and to continuing our discussions and advancing
our collaborative work.”
Dr. Jon Martinez of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary – “I
found the meeting extremely helpful as a newcomer to the field of applying resilience thinking
and field-based resilience assessments in management. I felt I benefited from the discussions in
three primary ways. 1) The meeting gave me a sense of the state of the application, capabilities
and technical workings of resilience assessments. 2) I now better understand the current
capabilities of remote sensing with respect to providing information on spatial variation in the
historic exposure of reef habitats to disturbances. 3) This stimulated my thinking on how field-
based resilience assessments could apply to coral reef management beyond the project a group
of us will be undertaking next year for west Kona.”
Dr. Lizzie McLeod of The Nature Conservancy – “I feel this meeting has resulted in many
prospects for new collaborations between TNC’s Reef Resilience program and applied research
scientists and managers that are advancing resilience thinking and products.”
Dr. Simon Pittman of the NOAA Biogeography Branch – “It was great to spend time
discussing the challenges of undertaking and applying reef resilience research with a group of

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pro-active, problem solving scientists and managers. Having an opportunity to interact face-to-
face on such a wide range of relevant and interconnected subjects all aimed at addressing a
common challenge was exciting and very useful. The sessions stimulated ideas for new
interdisciplinary approaches and resulted in my meeting new collaborators. The forward-
looking perspective that dominated the workshop was refreshing and overall the sessions have
given me fresh impetus for my resilience-based management projects.”
Emma Anders of the Hawaiʻi Dept. of Aquatic Resources – “I enjoyed discussing the
challenges of undertaking and applying reef resilience research with a group of pro-active,
problem-solving scientists and managers. I thought it was exciting and useful to have an
opportunity to interact face-to-face on such a wide range of relevant and interconnected subjects
all aimed at addressing our common challenge of applying resilience thinking. The sessions
stimulated ideas for new interdisciplinary approaches and I met many new collaborators. The
forward-looking perspective that dominated the workshop was refreshing and overall the
sessions have given me fresh impetus for my resilience-based management projects.”
!
Dr. Lyza Johnston of the CNMI Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality – “As a
newcomer to the coral reef management arena who is based on a small, relatively remote island,
this workshop was incredibly valuable in terms of connecting face-to-face with other managers
and top researchers from around the world. I learned a lot about the current state of resilience
research and the challenges of and progress towards resilience based coral reef management. I
was particularly excited about the tools that are available and being developed (e.g. the TNC
Reef Resilience Toolkit) that will make it easier for managers to assess resilience and potential
climate change impacts, adapt monitoring and management strategies accordingly, and connect
with other practitioners and experts.
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Appendix 3 – Topics for New Case Studies within TNC RR Toolkit
!
A number of case studies were identified during the workshop and report development to be
placed in the TNC Reef Resilience (R2) Toolkit. TNC has an updated template available for any
author of case studies and have agreed to work with authors in developing case studies.
Already completed:
1. Monitoring Coral Reef Communities in Hawaii’s First Herbivore Protection Area (Ivor
Williams; Darla White; Adel Heenan) http://www.reefresilience.org/case-
studies/hawaii-fisheries-management/
To be developed and assigned during workshop:
1. Incident response OR Exposure mapping/response GBR (Roger Beeden)
2. LBSP research/work - application to management of GBR (Jeff Maynard; Roger
Beeden)
3. HI Bleaching Response 2014 (Anne Rosinski)
4. Management actions (e.g., temp closures) using NOAA CRW SST data (Scott Heron)
5. USVI Reef Resilience Framework (Simon Pittman)
Suggested for development:
1. NOAA Habitat Blueprint Initiative and Resilience – Describe key habitats, key threats,
SMART objectives: how well do government and community priorities fit with
resilience evaluation? Plan to fund a resilience assessment in West Hawaiʻi. Restoration
options => actions – co-management, community buy in components.
2. Coral bleaching events provide an opportunity to implement resilience-based
management actions. For example targeting additional protection of herbivores to sites
that have had a resilience assessment. RBM objectives might be to protect high
resistance sites, aid the recovery of low resilience sites, and prioritize sites with high
value that have particular resilience characteristics. Example case study – Great Barrier
Reef, Keppel Bay 2006 coral bleaching event led to a community based resilience
assessment and targeted actions (anchoring restrictions) to reduce human pressures at
high and low resilience sites.
3. Great Barrier Reef, Australia (Keppel Bay and more recently analysis of Reef Health
Incident Response System data) - GBRMPA is using participatory capacity, strategy,
monitoring, assessment and evaluation measures to inform resilience-based management
of the world's largest coral reef ecosystem.

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4. Bahamas – MPA designed based on resilience based on manuscript from Ecology
Letters 2011 - Mumby, PJ, et al. (2011). Reserve design for uncertain responses of coral
reefs to climate change. Ecology Letters, 14(2), 132-140.
5. Consider a case study from other sectors (e.g., health, financial, other natural resource
management) that illustrate that RBM is not new and is already being implemented in
other sectors.

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Appendix 4 – Overviews of Theme Discussions and Next Steps
Theme 1: Mapping Environmental Disturbance/Exposure
Session Leads: Dr. Scott Heron and Dr. Jeffrey Maynard
Overview and Relevant Case Examples from Workshop Attendees
In combination with sensitivity, exposure to environmental disturbances and stressors yields
potential impact in the classic widely adopted IPCC vulnerability assessment framework.
Potential impact is then moderated by adaptive capacity to yield the assessment of vulnerability.
The sensitivity and adaptive capacity terms can be seen as resilience, and variation in exposure to
disturbances among coral reef sites or areas determines what the sites or areas have had to and
will have to be resilient to. Information on sensitivity and adaptive capacity (assessed resilience)
is only ever going to be available from a small percentage of the sites/areas within a management
jurisdiction. This is due to the high costs and logistical constraints associated with surveying
coral reefs. Participatory monitoring networks, like Eye on the Reef in the Great Barrier Reef
(Beeden et al. 2014), can reduce these costs and ensure managers regularly receive information
on coral reef community condition and composition. The information is still only available from
far less than half of the sites in the management jurisdiction. In contrast, information on historic,
near real-time and projected future exposure to environmental disturbances is available now for
all reef locations in the world at a 4-5km resolution. In essence, understanding spatial variation
in historic exposure to environmental disturbances provides a lens through which we can better
understand and more meaningfully compare the current community condition and composition
of coral reefs. Better understanding of projected future exposure to disturbances enables
comparisons among reefs or reef areas in the challenges posed for the resilience of these reefs or
reef areas as the climate changes. In combination, understanding historic and projected future
exposure to disturbances provides an improved understanding of spatial variation in vulnerability
and can inform conservation planning. We can identify and preferentially protect relative refugia
as well as support (and plan to support) recovery processes at locations more frequently exposed
to disturbances.
Workshop discussions focused on three recent advances made by workshop attendees in
mapping environmental disturbance/exposure: mapping historic exposure to thermal stress,
mapping exposure to heavy seas generated by cyclones, and statistical downscaling of climate
model projections.
Mapping exposure to thermal stress: The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) Coral
Reef Conservation Fund and NOAA CRCP awarded a grant to Heron, Maynard and Eakin to
produce tools for managers describing spatial variation in temperature variability, return period
and onset timing. Temperature variability ranked number 2 in the analysis presented within
McClanahan et al. (2012), which ranked 31 resilience indicators. Some experimental and field
evidence suggests that reefs where temperatures have greater variability are more likely to resist

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bleaching when temperatures are anomalously warm enough to cause bleaching (Guest et al.
2012). Temperature variability can be measured as the standard deviation of temperatures during
the warm season and also of temperatures from the full year – for some locations, inter-annual
variability exceeds intra-annual variability (e.g., along the equator; Donner 2011). Heron et al.
calculate both of these measures of variability for all coral reef locations at 4-km resolution using
the NOAA Pathfinder v5.2 SST dataset. The project leads greatly expanded the scope of this
project while underway and identified ~50 temperature stress metrics that characterize the
thermal history at coral reef sites with respect to exposure to thermal stress severe enough to
cause bleaching. Heron et al. are preparing a manuscript describing the project results with
submission planned by March/April of 2015. The manuscript describes spatial variation within
and among reef regions in the following (from 1985-2012): frequency of thermal stress events
(severe enough to cause bleaching; Degree Heating Weeks≥4 °C-weeks); mean onset month of
thermal stress events, rate of temperature increase (in °C/decade) for the 3 month warm season
(centered on the climatologically warmest month ), rate of temperature increase (in °C/decade)
for annual temperatures, and standard deviation in temperature in the warm season, and in the
warmest month. The project team is making all results available on this website:
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/thermal_history/th_index.php.
The plan (pre-workshop) was to have the images available in static form as maps and to present
the images for viewing through the interactive Google Earth
TM
platform. We discussed making
the data available as ArcGIS raster grids so they can more easily be used in spatial planning
processes. We also discussed developing guidance such that the conservation community
understands how to use the data to inform planning decisions. We will need a template for this
guidance so that guidance produced for exposure data layers is standardized. The conservation
community will need to be engaged on refining the guidance template and on refining the
guidance as it becomes available and starts to be used.
Mapping exposure to heavy seas generated by cyclones: Workshop attendees have been
collaborating over recent years with Dr. Marjetta Puotinen (Australian Institute of Marine
Science). Dr. Puotinen processes information on cyclone characteristics and track via a model
that estimates the likelihood coral reefs (4-km resolution) have been exposed to heavy seas (2
and 4 m) and for what duration. This capability has led to spatial data and maps for the GBR that
depict spatial variation in historic exposure to heavy seas generated by cyclones for 1985-2014.
Dr. Puotinen’s model can also be used immediately after a cyclone to assess spatial variation in
the likelihood of catastrophic damage, which can be used to optimize survey efforts and target
actions to support recovery. Currently, the maps of historic exposure to heavy seas generated by
cyclones are only available for NE Australia (Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea). Global products
similar to those described above for thermal stress can be developed. Managers can use these
products to shape the lens through which they assess the current condition of reefs in their area;
i.e., aid with understanding the drivers of differences in condition. However, >2000 cyclones
have produced gale force (>17 m/s) winds near coral reefs since 1985 so running all cyclones
through the model to assess spatial variation in frequency of exposure and average return period
(as examples) would be resource-intensive.
Statistical downscaling of climate model projections: Pacific Island Climate Change Cooperative
(PICCC) and NOAA CRCP funded the development of the IPCC AR5 global climate model

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projections of thermal stress and ocean acidification via grants to Drs. Maynard and van
Hooidonk for all of the IPCC’s RCP emissions scenarios. These model-resolution (1° x 1°)
projections use the CMIP5 suite of climate models and present: 1) the projected timing of the
onset of annual and 2x per decade bleaching (6 DHWs) and severe bleaching (8 DHWs)
conditions, and 2) changes in aragonite saturation state (absolute and percentage) and
calcification between 2010 and 2100 and between 2010 and the timing of the onset of severe
bleaching conditions under the emissions-intensive RCP8.5. These data are all available in static
and interactive form on the Coral Reef Watch website at:
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/climate/projections/piccc_oa_and_bleaching/index.php. The
model-resolution projections inform global policy and raise awareness but are too coarse to
inform decisions at the local-scale, which is where/how nearly all management and conservation
decisions are made. The project team developed a method for statistically downscaling the
climate model projections to a higher resolution (4-km) for a study of the greater Caribbean
funded by the NOAA CRCP (there are over 570 four-km pixels in a 1° climate model pixel). The
team found great spatial variation in the timing of the onset of bleaching and severe bleaching
conditions within roughly half of the climate model pixels in the Caribbean. The implication is
that statistical downscaling of model projections can be used to inform local-scale conservation
planning. The project team hopes to produce statistically downscaled model projections for all of
the world’s coral reefs in 2015.
While reviewing these recent advances, the workshop attendees developed a list of the variables
for which we have near-real time, historic or projected future exposure to environmental
disturbance information for all coral reefs. These include: temperature stress (in relation to
bleaching and disease), acidification, wind speed, and GCM-resolution projections of
temperature stress and acidification. A list was also produced of the variables for which we know
information is available and thus possible to include in a ‘one-stop-shop’ website for exposure
information. These include all of the following: climate indices such as ENSO; heavy seas
generated by cyclones; statistical downscaling of climate model projections; ocean color-based
proxies for productivity nutrients, sediments, clarity, including freshwater inundation; waves in
terms of average wave height and other metrics like average max wave; salinity/rainfall;
irradiance; currents; sea level; and low stand exposure. This effort should also include an
exploration of combinations of data (remotely sensed, in situ, etc.) from across NOAA and
external partners that could be developed into information layers to provide further insight into
reef condition and potential resilience. Workshop attendees discussed prioritizing these variables
and working towards information on all of these being presented on the NOAA Coral Reef
Watch website (see below).
Key Next Steps
Next steps presented in italics are high priorities and are also presented in the workshop
summary.
1. Plan for the NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) website to become a ‘one-stop-shop’ for
all information related to near-real-time, historic and projected future exposure of
coral reefs to environmental disturbances. This needs to involve presenting links
within the website to all other relevant products and ensuring that guidance for

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managers is available for all types of information made available.
2. Develop guidance for managers on how to use exposure data layers in spatial
planning following the development of a template such that guidance is complete and
consistent for every spatial data layer presented on the NOAA CRW site.
3. *Produce statistically downscaled climate model projections of global bleaching and
annual bleaching conditions.
4. Develop a webpage within the NOAA Coral Reef Watch website that makes all
historic and projected future exposure data layers available as raster grids and/or
netcdf files to facilitate use in spatial planning exercises with guidance on how to
combine exposure layers.
5. Write a review/guide to the types of information currently available related to
historic, near-real time and projected future exposure of coral reef areas to
environmental disturbances. The guide needs to be inclusive of the resolution of the
data and what the resolution may be within five years based on currently funded
work/research efforts. This document could be inclusive of the types of users likely to
find the information useful and present guidance (see previous item) on how to use
the information in spatial planning exercises or communications and outreach.
6. Lead a participatory process resulting in our prioritizing all of the various information
layers that could be made available to the scientific and management community
based on potential utility in decision-making processes and outreach.
Relevant References
Ateweberhan, M., T.R. McClanahan. (2010) Relationship between historical sea-surface
temperature variability and climate change-induced coral mortality in the western Indian
Ocean. Marine Pollution Bulletin 60: 964-70. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2010.03.033
Berkelmans, R., A.M. Jones, B. Schaffelke (2012) Salinity thresholds of Acropora spp. on the
Great Barrier Reef. Coral Reefs 31: 1103–1110. doi:10.1007/s00338-012-0930-z
Carrigan, A.D., M. Puotinen (2014) Tropical cyclone cooling combats region-wide coral
bleaching. Global Change Biology 5: 1604-1613. doi:10.1111/gcb.12541
Devlin, M.J., L.W. McKinna, J.G. Álvarez-Romero, C. Petus, B. Abott, P. Harkness, J. Brodie
(2012) Mapping the pollutants in surface riverine flood plume waters in the Great Barrier
Reef, Australia. Marine Pollution Bulletin 65: 224–235
Donner, S.D. (2011) An evaluation of the effect of recent temperature variability on the
prediction of coral bleaching events. Ecol Appl 21: 1718–1730.
Eakin, C.M. et al. (2010) Caribbean Corals in Crisis: Record Thermal Stress, Bleaching, and
Mortality in 2005. PLoS ONE 5(11): e13969. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013969.

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Gove, J.M., G.J. Williams, M.A. McManus, S.F. Heron, S.A. Sandin, et al. (2013) Quantifying
Climatological Ranges and Anomalies for Pacific Coral Reef Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 8(4):
e61974. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061974
Guest, J.R., A.H. Baird, J.A. Maynard, E. Muttaqin, A.J. Edwards, et al. (2012) Contrasting
Patterns of Coral Bleaching Susceptibility in 2010 Suggest an Adaptive Response to Thermal
Stress. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33353. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033353
Gilmour, J.P., L.D. Smith, A.J. Heyward, A.H. Baird, M.S. Pratchett (2013) Recovery of an
Isolated Coral Reef System Following Severe Disturbance. Science 340: 69-71.
Liu, G. et al. (2014) Reef-Scale Thermal Stress Monitoring of Coral Ecosystems: New 5-km
Global Products from NOAA Coral Reef Watch. Remote Sensing 6: 11579-11606;
doi:10.3390/rs61111579.
McClanahan, T.R. et al. (2012) Prioritizing Key Resilience Indicators to Support Coral Reef
Management in a Changing Climate. PLoS ONE 7(8): e42884.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042884
Pratchett, M.S., D. McCowan, J.A. Maynard, S.F. Heron. (2013) Changes in Bleaching
Susceptibility among Corals Subject to Ocean Warming and Recurrent Bleaching in Moorea,
French Polynesia. PLoS ONE 8(7): e70443. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070443
van Hooidonk, R., J.A. Maynard, S. Planes. (2013). Temporary refugia for coral reefs in a
warming world. Nature Climate Change, 3(5), 508-511.
van Hooidonk, R., J.A. Maynard, D. Manzello, S. Planes. (2014). Opposite latitudinal gradients
in projected ocean acidification and bleaching impacts on coral reefs. Global change
biology, 20(1), 103-112.
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Theme 2: Field-Based Resilience Assessments (includes Herbivorous Fish)
Session Leads: Dr. Jeffrey Maynard and Steven McKagan
Overview and Relevant Case Examples from Workshop Attendees
Interest has escalated in recent years in undertaking field-based assessments of ecological
resilience potential in coral reef areas. Assessing resilience potential was first conceptually
developed within a Conservation Biology paper written by Salm and West in 2003. These
authors made the case that there are characteristics of coral reefs (physical and ecological) that
result in gradients within management areas in the likelihood of resisting and/or recovering from
disturbances such as coral bleaching. These characteristics, which we have come to refer to as
‘resilience indicators’, are variables that can be assessed. Obura and Grimsditch then led a multi-
author report published by the IUCN in 2009 (with other partners like the NOAA CRCP) that
first described how to undertake a resilience assessment. The IUCN (2009) report was meant to
serve as a guide but has been difficult to apply and use because >60 resilience indicators are
recommended and clear guidance is not provided on how to select or scale indicators or how to
produce a final resilience score, rank sites, and use the scores and rankings to make decisions. In
2012, a group of authors (including many workshop attendees) wrote a review of ~30 of the 60
indicators presented in IUCN (2009) thought to have the strongest relationships with the
processes that underlie resistance and resilience (McClanahan et al. 2012). The McClanahan
review helped prioritize indicators and recommended a site selection framework for undertaking
resilience assessments using only 11 indicators. These indicators are as follows: resistant coral
species, temperature variability, nutrients (pollution), sedimentation, coral diversity, herbivore
biomass, physical human impacts, coral disease, macroalgae, recruitment, and fishing pressure.
Since the McClanahan review was published, TNC has updated their Reef Resilience toolkit to
include new guidance on undertaking resilience assessments, which includes a PowerPoint-based
tutorial on analyzing data once the field assessments are complete.
The first field/desktop-based implementations of the framework recommended within
McClanahan et al. 2012 occurred in CNMI under funding provided by NOAA CRCP and PICSC
(to the session leads) and in Hawaiʻi (led by Brett Schumacher with funding from the CRCP and
NMFS), as well as in Palau and Indonesia (by the session lead and collaborators with funding
from CRCP and TNC). The most recent applied research in this area, conducted in CNMI,
involved assessing the resilience potential of 84 sites near the islands of Saipan, Tinian, Aguijan,
and Rota. The study leads compared the resilience potential of the surveyed sites within and
among the islands and developed decision-support frameworks that identified sites that warrant
management attention/focus based on combinations of resilience potential and anthropogenic
stress. The report on the portion of the CNMI study undertaken in 2012 in Saipan can be found
here:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/coris/library/NOAA/CRCP/project/204/CoRIS_204_Saipan_Resilienc
e_ReportandAppendix_Maynard_McKagan_2012.pdf. Reports on the current work will become
available by April of 2015.

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TNC and NOAA CRCP have also completed an assessment of relative resilience potential for
coral reef sites near St. Croix, USVI. The report on this assessment is available by request from
Kemit Amon-Lewis of TNC. During the St. Croix assessment the study leads (Maynard and
Amon-Lewis) led a participatory process for selecting indicators based on the McClanahan et al.
2012 survey results and data availability. Attendees expressed interest in the indicator selection
process used because similar processes will have to be led for any area for which an assessment
is going to be completed.
The impression from workshop attendees is that reef managers everywhere are interested in
undertaking resilience assessments but need much more guidance on how to determine: if and
why an assessment should be undertaken, how and how frequently to do the assessment, and
how to make management decisions following an assessment. The CNMI study leads have
described (in recent presentations to funders) the process of undertaking an assessment as having
the following 5 steps:
1. Deciding to undertake the assessment
2. Selecting indicators
3. Undertaking the assessment
4. Analyzing the data
5. Developing management recommendations
There was agreement that more guidance is needed for all 5 parts of the process (listed above).
Attendees debated whether there was value in producing a report similar to that produced by
IUCN in 2009 as a way to compile all of the guidance for undertaking resilience assessments and
making management decisions once assessments are complete. Attendees felt the guidance could
take the form of further expansions to TNC’s toolkit and/or a guidance document that compiles
all existing guidance and analysis examples into a new guidance document. It will be especially
important to link resilience assessment results to management decision-making processes. The
team leading the resilience assessments undertaken in CNMI have made progress in that area
using queries of assessment results to target a range of different types of management actions.
The team’s work was in review at the time of publication of this report (Maynard et al. in
review) but will be published open access later this year and available by request from this
report’s lead authors.
Next Steps
Workshop attendees identified next steps related to preparing new/more guidance for managers
for all of the 5 parts of the resilience assessment process listed above. All of the next steps
identified for this workshop theme involve developing guidance. Developing all of this guidance
is going to require a participatory process involving managers and the output(s) will need a
consistent presentation format/style and may need to all be combined within one output and/or
delivered via the same mechanism.
Next steps presented in italics are high priorities and are also presented in the workshop
summary.

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1. Develop guidance with real world examples for all parts of the process of undertaking a
resilience assessment and using assessment results to target management actions and
inform conservation planning. This guidance needs to include: selecting indicators, using
any existing data in the assessment, analyzing the data, presenting and reporting on the
results, and descriptions of options for completing an assessment at different resource
levels.
1. Deciding to undertake the assessment
Develop a decision tree that helps managers assess whether they have access to the resources and
expertise to undertake a resilience assessment.
The decision tree should be complemented by a comprehensive list of the various ways that
resilience assessment information can be used so that what the assessment can and cannot
achieve is very clear.
The relevant TNC toolkit pages need to be updated to describe the value of one-off versus
repeated assessments.
2. Selecting indicators
Organize a participatory process that results in a group agreeing on a core set of resilience
indicators to be used all over the world. Lists for each of the various reef regions may also be
useful. This process needs to result in the lists as well as guidance on how managers and
collaborating scientists can select indicators to be used in their assessment.
Develop an interactive tool based on the results of the above that helps people to select indicators
and to document their process.
3. Undertaking the assessment
Develop guidance describing how to undertake the assessments retrospectively (i.e., using
existing data) and for when new data collection is planned. The guidance needs to include how to
evaluate existing data to determine if a retrospective resilience assessment is possible and a table
that pairs recommended methods and units with the various resilience indicators and describes a
process for selecting from among the methods options.
4. Analyzing the data
Develop guidance describing the range of ways data can be analyzed such that a continuous
value is produced for each resilience indicator (if this is possible). Guidance exists describing
how to complete the data analysis within Excel and PowerPoint-based tutorials. Few have seen
that guidance so attendees and others need to review and help expand/improve upon it.
Develop a tool that helps people analyze their fish observational data to better understand
functional impact.

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5. Developing management recommendations
Describe the rationale managers can use to make various management decisions following
resilience assessments. This is expected to become available in papers and reports over the
coming months but will need to be summarized in the same format and style as the guidance for
the other four parts of the process. Examples will need to be shared that include maps to help
explain the assessment results, rationale for a decision, and what the decision would be.
Relevant References
Green, A.L., D.R. Bellwood, H. Choat. (2009). Monitoring functional groups of herbivorous reef
fishes as indicators of coral reef resilience. A practical guide for coral reef managers in the
Asia Pacific Region. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. Available online at: http://cmsdata. iucn.
org/downloads/resilience_herbivorous_monitoring. pdf.Knudby, A., Pittman, S. J., Maina, J.,
& Rowlands, G. (2014). Remote Sensing and Modeling of Coral Reef Resilience. In Remote
Sensing and Modeling (pp. 103-134). Springer International Publishing.
Maina, J., V. Venus, T.R. McClanahan, M. Ateweberhan. (2008). Modelling susceptibility of
coral reefs to environmental stress using remote sensing data and GIS models. Ecological
modelling, 212(3), 180-199.
Maynard, J. A., P.A. Marshall, J.E. Johnson, S.Harman. (2010). Building resilience into practical
conservation: identifying local management responses to global climate change in the
southern Great Barrier Reef. Coral Reefs, 29(2), 381-391.
Maynard, J. et al. (2012) Coral reef resilience to climate change in Saipan, CNMI; field-based
assessments, and implications for vulnerability and future management. Available here:
http://www.fpir.noaa.gov/Library/HCD/CoRIS_204_Saipan_Resilience_Report_Maynard_M
cKagan_2012.pdf
McClanahan, T. R. et al. (2012). Prioritizing key resilience indicators to support coral reef
management in a changing climate. PloS One, 7(8), e42884.
Mumby, P. J., N.H. Wolff, Y.M. Bozec, I. Chollett, P. Halloran. (2014). Operationalizing the
resilience of coral reefs in an era of climate change.Conservation Letters, 7(3), 176-187.
Mumby, P. J., A. Hastings, H.J. Edwards. (2007). Thresholds and the resilience of Caribbean
coral reefs. Nature, 450(7166), 98-101.
Nyström, M., C. Folke. (2001). Spatial resilience of coral reefs. Ecosystems,4(5), 406-417.
Nyström, M., N.A.J. Graham, J. Lokrantz, &A.V. Norström. (2008). Capturing the cornerstones
of coral reef resilience: linking theory to practice.Coral Reefs, 27(4), 795-809.
Obura, D., G. Grimsditch. (2009). Resilience Assessment of coral reefs: Assessment protocol for
coral reefs, focusing on coral bleaching and thermal stress. IUCN.
Rowlands, G., S. Purkis, B. Riegl, L. Metsamaa, A. Bruckner, P. Renaud. (2012). Satellite
imaging coral reef resilience at regional scale. A case-study from Saudi Arabia. Marine
pollution bulletin, 64(6), 1222-1237.
Salm, R.V. (2006). Coral reef resilience and resistance to bleaching (No. 1). IUCN.

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Theme!3:!Connectivity!!
Session Leads: Lew Gramer and Matt Kendall
Overview and Relevant Case Examples from Workshop Attendees
Connectivity can be broadly divided into two topics that occur at very different scales, both of
which can influence reef resilience: landscape-scale and larval connectivity.
Landscape-scale connectivity occurs among adjacent or nearby habitats. This may include any of
the following: daily movements of fish residing on one habitat type during the day and foraging
on another at night (e.g. haemulidae on Caribbean reefs), seasonal migrations such as movement
from inshore residence areas to shelf-edge spawning sites, or ontogenic shifts wherein fish move
from settlement or juvenile habitat to habitats that better suit the adult phase. Telemetry and tag-
recapture projects are ideally suited to addressing these types of questions. For example, Pittman
et al. (2013) use telemetry data to describe cross-shelf movements of a diversity of reef fish taxa
in the context of habitat distribution, spawning sites, and MPA boundaries. Within landscape-
scale connectivity there is vertical connectivity, which is the transport of organisms and
reproductive material from deeper reefs, for example in an offshore reef slope, to shallower reefs
inshore. This form of connectivity can be strongest where local retention is strong, and can be
most important when vertical connectivity exists and deep-water reefs serve as refugia (i.e., from
thermal stress). Genetic studies have provided the primary information on vertical connectivity
so far (Beger et al. 2014; Serrano et al. 2014); this is by far the least well-studied aspect of
connectivity.
Larval connectivity includes interisland or inter-regional larval and egg transport for some fish,
corals, and invertebrates. At this scale of connectivity eggs and larval forms are transported from
spawning sources to settlement destinations primarily by ocean currents. Sufficient larval sources
must be maintained for reefs to absorb and recover from disturbance. Larval connectivity may
occur on a wide range of spatial scales, from basins (Cowen and Sponaugle 2009; Shulzitski et
al. 2009) to inland seas (e.g., Muhling et al. 2013) to the scale of patch reefs and the surface
wave field (Monismith 2004). The longer the larval duration and lower the swimming and
sensory capabilities of the larvae, the greater the potential for longer-distance transport of larvae
from sources to destinations.
Several approaches can be used to investigate larval connectivity. Drifter data can be used to
track the ocean currents that move larvae. The micro-chemistry of otoliths or skeletal elements
can be used to track larval pathways. Genetics can be used to measure gene flow and even
parentage among locations. Lastly, transport models can be used to simulate the movements of
virtual larvae among sources and destinations. These transport models can be as simple as wind-
and tide-based estimates of cross-shelf transport, or as complicated as multi-scale hydrodynamic
ocean models. In combination, these approaches can provide an understanding of: 1) which reefs
in a region serve as important larval sources and destinations, and 2) where to focus management
efforts to increase the resilience of sites and the system.

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Workshop attendees have used the approaches described above recently. For example, Kendall et
al. (2014) used satellite-tracked ocean-drifters to document the relative isolation of the Mariana
archipelago as either a source or destination of larvae with a pelagic phase under ~30 days.
Kendall et al. (2013) also recently used transport simulations to demonstrate the westward
transport of larvae along the Samoan Archipelago and the reduced connectivity anticipated in the
region in response to warmer waters and climate change. Gramer et al. (2009) and Gramer
(2013) investigated the cross-shelf transport mechanisms, which provide the “last leg” in far-
field larval connectivity with reefs, in particular those on continental as opposed to insular
shelves.
Some connectivity information can be gleaned from freely available global-hydrodynamic
models and drifter datasets that can be analyzed to provide a basic understanding of larger-scale
transport direction and scale. While not appropriate for all regions, these datasets can be used to
guide more efficient sampling for other techniques such as plankton tows, genetic analyses, and
microchemistry studies. Other low-cost options include using proxies such as prevailing wind
patterns and modeled tidal currents with knowledge of local geography and seafloor topography
to evaluate local retention and landscape-scale connectivity. Guidance needs to be made
available to managers so that these low-cost options are utilized and to help set standards for how
this information is gathered and used.
More resource-intensive approaches can greatly improve our understanding of connectivity. As
examples, fine-scale hydrodynamic models are needed to resolve nearshore current processes
that may promote or hinder larval retention, and promote or hinder connectivity with other reefs
and reef systems. Genetic sampling can provide similar information and costs for testing
continue to decrease. However, gathering samples within systems comprised of remote islands
poses logistical challenges and can have high costs.
At reefs and in reef systems everywhere, all of the following have to be measured or estimated to
assess connectivity at any scale with confidence: spawning population size and fecundity,
navigational and swimming capabilities of larvae, larval mortality rates in response to
environmental conditions, and the extent and quality of settlement habitat for larvae from diverse
taxa.
Key Next Steps
Next steps presented in italics are high priorities and are also presented in the workshop
summary.
1. Define simple and inexpensive ways to establish a basic understanding of larval retention
and connectivity potential and develop guidance for these approaches.
2. Seek to define “how much connectivity is enough” to maintain genetic versus
demographic connectivity. Defining such values for various scales should ultimately
replace present studies that only describe relative connectivity strength among locations.

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3. *Refine regionally specific guidance (based on 1 and 2) on spatial density and size
for area based management initiatives where intensive circulation modeling/studies or
genetic connectivity data are not available. This goes beyond traditional efforts to show
linkages between MPAs by expanding the analysis to include linkages between all types
of place based management, including but not limited to: priority watersheds, restricted
areas, LMMAs, MPAs, high use and high enforcement areas, etc.
4. Develop case studies that describe: 1) how to include connectivity information to
expand/enhance field-based assessments of ecological resilience, and 2) the actions
managers can take once connectivity at any or all scales is better understood.
5. Additional information is needed to enhance realism in the transport simulations now
commonly used to estimate and depict larval connectivity. Proper parameterization of
variables such as spawning population size, growth and survival dynamics during
transport at sea, sensory and swimming capabilities of larvae near reefs, and suitability of
settlement habitat are all needed. Basic research on these processes is needed everywhere
resource-intensive approaches to understanding connectivity are planned. We need to
better link experts developing models with those that have been working to parameterize
input variables.
6. Develop a report on the significance of mesophotic reef connectivity for both field-based
assessments of coral reef ecosystem resilience as well as resilience-based management
more broadly. Effort will include a review of how we can better identify potential
mesophotic reef areas using remote sensing and mapping technologies and characterize
areas once ground-truthed. Review will also examine the implications of assuming that
the relative resilience potential of shallow reefs in an area is representative of adjacent
deep reefs.
Relevant References
Almany, GR, S.R. Connolly, D.D. Heath, J.D. Hogan, G.P. Jones, L.J. McCook, M. Mills, R.L.
Pressey, D.H. Williamson. (2009). Connectivity, biodiversity conservation and the design of
marine reserve networks for coral reefs. Coral Reefs 28: 339-351
Basterretxea G, A. Jordi, I.A. Catalan, A. Sabates. (2012) Model-based assessment of local-
scale fish larval connectivity in a network of marine protected areas. Fisheries
Oceanography 21:291-306
Beger M, K.A. Selkoe, E. Treml, P.H. Barber, S. von der Heyden, E.D. Crandall, R.J. Toonen,
C. Riginos. (2014). Evolving coral reef conservation with genetic information. Bulletin of
Marine Science 90:159-185
Campana, SE. (1999). Chemistry and composition of fish otoliths: pathways, mechanisms and
applications. Marine Ecology Progress Series. 188: 263-297
Cowen, R.K., S. Sponaugle. (2009). Larval Dispersal and Marine Population Connectivity.
Annual Review of Marine Science 1:443-466
Cuif M, D.M. Kaplan, J. Lefevre, V.M. Faure, M. Caillaud, P. Verley, L. Vigliola, C. Lett.
(2014). Wind-induced variability in larval retention in a coral reef system: A biophysical

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modelling study in the South-West Lagoon of New Caledonia. Progress in Oceanography
122:105-115
Gramer, L. J., (2013). Dynamics of Sea Temperature Variability on Florida's Reef Tract.
University of Miami, Ph.D. Dissertation.
Gramer, L. J., E.M. Johns, J.C. Hendee, C.M. Hu, (2009) Characterization of biologically
significant hydrodynamic anomalies on the Florida Reef Tract. In Dodge, R., ed.,
Proceedings of the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium, July 7 - 11, 2008, Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, 470-474.
Kendall, M.S., M. Poti. (2014). Potential larval sources, destinations, and self-seeding in the
Mariana Archipelago documented using ocean drifters. Journal of Oceanography
doi10.1007/s10872-014-0251-7
Kendall, M.S., M. Poti, T.T. Wynne, B.P. Kinlan, L.B. Bauer. (2013). Consequences of the life
history traits of pelagic larvae on interisland connectivity during a changing climate. MEPS.
489:43-59.
Kool, JT, C.B. Paris, P.H. Barber, R.K. Cowen. (2011). Connectivity and the development of
population genetic structure in Indo-West Pacific coral reef communities. Global Ecology
and Biogeog. 20:695-706
McClanahan, T.R. et al. (2012). Prioritizing Key Resilience Indicators to Support Coral Reef
Management in a Changing Climate. Plos One 7
Monismith, S.G., D.A. Fong. (2004). A note on the potential transport of scalars and organisms
by surface waves. Limnology and Oceanography 49:1214-1217
Muhling, B.A., R.H. Smith, L. Vasquez-Yeomans, J.T. Lamkin, E.M. Johns, L. Carrillo, E.
Sosa-Cordero, E. Malca. (2013). Larval fish assemblages and mesoscale oceanographic
structure along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. Fisheries Oceanography 22:409-428
Munday, PL, J.M. Leis, L.M. Lough, C.B. Paris, M.J. Kingsford, M.L. Berumen, J. Lambrechts.
(2009). Climate change and coral reef connectivity. Coral Reefs 28:379-395.
Sale, P.F. et al. (2010). Preserving reef connectivity: A handbook for marine protected area
managers. Connectivity Working Group, Coral Reef Target Research & Capacity Building
for Management Program, United Nations University-Ins. For Water, Env., and Health. 80pp.
Santos, S.R. (2014). Expanding the population genetic perspective of cnidarian-Symbiodinium
symbioses. Molecular Ecology 23:4185-4187
Serrano, X., I.B. Baums, K. O'Reilly, T.B. Smith, R.J. Jones, T.L Shearer, F.L.D. Nunes, A.C.
Baker. (2014.) Geographic differences in vertical connectivity in the Caribbean coral
Montastraea cavernosa despite high levels of horizontal connectivity at shallow depths.
Molecular Ecology 23:4226-4240
Shulzitski, K., M.A. McCartney, M.L. Burton. (2009) Population connectivity among Dry
Tortugas, Florida, and Caribbean populations of mutton snapper (Lutjanus analis), inferred
from multiple microsatellite loci. Fishery Bulletin 107:501-509

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Theme 4: Land-based Sources of Pollution
Session Leads: Dr. Simon Pittman and Dr. Kirsten Oleson
Overview and Case Examples from Workshop Attendees
Land-based sources of pollution (LBSP), entering the marine environment from runoff,
discharges and spillages, are widely acknowledged to have a detrimental impact on the condition
of coral reefs. LBSP typically involves the addition of nutrients, sediments, toxins, bacteria and
viruses to coastal waters that can impair coral health. Corals and associated organisms will
respond differently to stressors, with different thresholds, depending on their physiological and
anatomical adaptations to environmental conditions. Stressors from LBSP also interact with
other stressors such as thermal stress and disease, contributing to cumulative impacts. LBSP can
reduce the quality of non-reef environments too such as seagrasses, mangroves and unvegetated
sediments which are known to function synergistically to form interconnected coral reef
ecosystems. For example, where seagrass-reef connectivity is important, changes such as loss,
gain or fragmentation of seagrasses due to freshwater exposure, nutrification or burial can impact
the resilience of coral reefs. More directly, LBSP can introduce toxins to the marine environment
which may persist, accumulate and transform in sediments and in the tissues of plants and
animals creating disease in corals and a potential threat to human health where reef organisms
are consumed.
All of the following pose challenges to our understanding of the impact of LBSP on reef
resilience: the exposure is geographically widespread, the history of exposure is usually not well
documented, the fate of pollutants when dispersed in marine waters is often unknown, and there
is insufficient numerical knowledge of biological tolerance to pollutants to allow managers to set
meaningful exceedance thresholds.
Research is conducted either through controlled laboratory experiments to examine lethal doses
to organisms, and some reef specific in-situ observational or controlled studies to examine reef-
specific organismal and/or community response, or at broader spatial scales with modeling and
mapping of potential threats using information on the physical characteristics of watersheds.
Here, we focused on the application of spatial models as a rapid and cost-effective approach to
identify and prioritize areas for management concern at the scales of both individual watersheds
and whole islands or continents. The majority of models require spatial data, but the data
requirements vary widely.
The Landscape Development Intensity Index (LDI) (Brown & Vivas 2005) uses only land cover
data, which is widely available from satellite imagery. There are more sophisticated models that
incorporate dynamic hydrological processes and surface geology, such as INVEST, N-SPECT
and Summit to Sea. For the island of St. Croix, in the U.S. Caribbean, LDI has been applied by a
NOAA-led team to assist marine protected area managers in identifying areas of concern
(http://coastalscience.noaa.gov/projects/detail?key=164). The study (Pittman et al. 2014) defined
a near-shore zone, referred to as the Watershed Impact Zone (WIZ), where in-water biological
surveys had been conducted and used to evaluate the relative threat to vulnerable coral species

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from LBSP. The LDI was subsequently used in a reef resilience assessment for St. Croix by The
Nature Conservancy (Maynard et al. 2014) with a weighted distance to LDI factor. An earlier
LDI approach was conducted by a team from the US-EPA, which found that the highest LDI
(i.e., most urbanized watersheds) was associated with reefs of lowest coral cover (Oliver et al.
2011). The US-EPA is currently developing a database of species sensitivity and tolerance to
LBSP stressors for the Biological Condition Gradient framework to help implement the Clean
Water Act of 1972 in the U.S. Caribbean. A comparison of watershed health and reef health
indices in Hawaiʻi found a positive relationship especially in south-facing shores (Rodgers et al
2012).
The InVEST tool was applied to estimate sediment runoff from watersheds in Hawaiʻi. InVEST
uses the universal soil loss equation to estimate sediment loss due to sheet erosion. However, in
some areas of Hawaiʻi this may not be the dominant process driving sediment loads. Channel
erosion and mass wasting events may be significant contributors. Other more complex models
may be better at capturing these processes, and handling the flashy, heterogeneous nature of
Hawaiian watersheds. Moreover, stressors other than sediment, such as urban pollution, on-site
disposal systems, legacy chemicals from agriculture, and wastewater injection, inevitably play
important roles, necessitating tools that can weight and combine stressors. However, little is
known about the relative importance of these stressors in Hawaiʻi and elsewhere.
Key next steps
Next steps presented in italics are high priorities and are also presented in the workshop
summary.
1. Compile a list of evidence-based water quality standards with exceedance threshold
values for key stressors that are relevant to coral reefs (e.g., toxins, sediment, bacteria,
salinity, total max daily loadings) through a literature review. This list needs to be made
publicly accessible and a group or groups needs to be accountable for keeping the list
updated.
2. Consistent and coordinated reporting on water quality status and trends for parameters that are
meaningful to coral reef health (see above) are required.
3. Write a review of the tools and approaches for spatial modeling of land-based sources of
pollution to produce a concise guide with estimates of resource requirements, case
studies and links to required software.
4. Regional and global studies are needed to examine the linkage between 1) historical
changes in land cover; 2) ocean color/water quality; and 3) coral reef condition. This
will inform ‘what if’ scenarios to help communicate the consequences of land cover
change for coral reef health.
5. More evidence is needed to assess the effectiveness of spatial proxies in representing the
distribution of threats from watershed to marine water quality and coral reef condition.
For example, direct measurements of water quality and benthic communities are needed

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(water samples and ocean color data, dispersal models) to link the landscape models
such as LDI to coral condition (see Maina et al. 2012).
6. A detailed region-by-region cumulative impacts model is required to support resilience
assessments. Global cumulative impact models such as Reefs at Risk Revisited (Burke et
al. 2011) and Halpern et al. (2008) models need to be refined and updated to be locally
applicable.
7. Spatially explicit techniques such as dynamic exposure mapping (Maynard et al. in
review), as demonstrated for the Great Barrier Reef, should be integrated with LBSP
models and applied more widely around the world. A greater understanding of the impact
to reef resilience from multiple interacting stressors is urgently required. Existing studies
suggest that sedimentation and nutrification decrease reef resilience to climate change
impacts (Carilli et al. 2009; Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2011).
8. LBSP assessments need to be framed in a holistic interdisciplinary framework. A more
complete understanding of the bigger picture of LBSP and reef resilience requires a
holistic systems science approach capable of modeling spatial dynamics, feedback loops
and interactive effects. This systems science approach has to be inclusive of expertise
from hydrological and hydrodynamic modeling, biogeochemical analyses, physiology
and toxicology, ecology and socio-economics. The DPSIR (Driver-Pressures-State-
Impact-Response) model (Bricker et al. 2003) has potential as a broad causal framework
where linkages can be examined from point of stress (e.g. coral mortality) to drivers such
as State policy (e.g. agricultural policy/ urban planning). The DPSIR framework may
need to be evolved from a static reporting framework to a dynamic modeling
environment capable of integrating information from a coupled socio-ecological system
(see, e.g., Kelble 2013 as a good first step).
Relevant References
Bartley, R., Z.T. Bainbridge, S.E. Lewis, F.J. Kroon, S.N. Wilkinson, J.E. Brodie, D.M. Silburn.
(2014). Relating sediment impacts on coral reefs to watershed sources, processes and
management: A review. Science of the Total Environment, 468, 1138-1153. doi:
10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.09.030
Begin, C., G. Brooks, R.A. Larson, S. Dragicevic, C.E.R. Scharron, I.M. Cote. (2014). Increased
sediment loads over coral reefs in Saint Lucia in relation to land use change in contributing
watersheds. Ocean & Coastal Management, 95, 35-45. doi:
10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2014.03.018
Bricker, S.B., J.G. Ferreira, T. Simas. (2003). An integrated methodology for assessment of
estuarine trophic status. Ecological modelling, 169(1), 39-60.
Burke, L., K. Reytar, M. Spalding, A. Perry. (2011). Reefs at risk revisited (p. 114).
Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.
Carilli, J.E., R.D. Norris, B.A. Black, S.M. Walsh, M. McField. (2009). Local stressors
reduce coral resilience to bleaching. Plos One, 4(7), e6324.
Duarte, C.M., et al. (2013). Is Ocean Acidification an Open-Ocean Syndrome? Understanding

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Anthropogenic Impacts on Seawater pH. Estuaries and Coasts, 36(2), 221-236. doi:
10.1007/s12237-013-9594-3
Fore, L.S., J.R. Karr, W.S. Fisher, P. Bradley, W.S. Davis. (2009). Heeding a call to action for
US coral reefs: The untapped potential of the Clean Water Act. Mar Poll Bull, 58(10), 1421-
1423.
Halpern, B. et al. (2008). A global map of human impact on marine ecosystems. Science
319(5865):948–952.
Kelble, C.R., D.K. Loomis, S. Lovelace, W.K. Nuttle, P.B. Ortner, P. Fletcher, G. Cook, J.
Lorenz, J.N. Boyer. (2013). The EBM-DPSER conceptual model: integrating ecosystem
services into the DPSIR framework. PloS one, 8(8), e70766.
Kroon, F.J., B. Schaffelke, R. Bartley. (2014). Informing policy to protect coastal coral reefs:
Insight from a global review of reducing agricultural pollution to coastal ecosystems. Marine
Pollution Bulletin, 85(1), 33-41. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.06.003
Maina, J., H. de Moel, J.E. Vermaat, J. Henrich Bruggemann, M.M. Guillaume, C. Grove, et al.
(2012). Linking coral river runoff proxies with climate variability, hydrology and land-use in
Madagascar catchments. Mar Poll Bull, 64(10), 2047-2059.
Maynard J., K. Lewis, J. Brown, G. Ahmadia. (2014). Assessing the relative resilience of the
coral reefs of St. Croix, USVI. Report prepared for The Nature Conservancy and NOAA
Coral Reef Conservation Program.
Melbourne-Thomas, J., C.R. Johnson, E.A. Fulton. (2011). Regional-scale scenario analysis for
the Meso-American Reef system: Modelling coral reef futures under multiple stressors. Eco
Mod, 222(10), 1756-1770.
Oliver, L.M., J.C. Lehrter, W.S. Fisher. (2011). Relating landscape development intensity to
coral reef condition in the watersheds of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Mar Ecol Prog
Ser, 427, 293-302.
Pittman S.J., D.S. Dorfman, S.D. Hile, C.F.G. Jeffrey, M.A. Edwards, C. Caldow. (2013). Land-
Sea Characterization of the St. Croix East End Marine Park, U.S. Virgin Islands. NOAA
Technical Memorandum NOS NCCOS 170. Silver Spring, MD. 119 pp.
Prouty, N.G., C.D. Storlazzi, A.L.McCutcheon, J.W. Jenson. (2014). Historic impact of
watershed change and sedimentation to reefs along west-central Guam. Coral Reefs, 33(3),
733-749. doi: 10.1007/s00338-014-1166-x
Rehr, A.P., M.J. Small, P.S. Fischbeck, P. Bradley, W.S. Fisher. (2014). The role of scientific
studies in building consensus in environmental decision making: a coral reef example.
Environment Systems & Decisions, 34(1, Sp. Iss. SI), 60-87. doi: 10.1007/s10669-014-9491-
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Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 7, 108-117. doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2014.01.003
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10.1016/j.jmarsys.2003.11.018

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Theme 5: Managers Use of Resilience Information and Reporting
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Session leads: Roger Beeden and Britt Parker
Overview and Relevant Case Examples from Workshop Attendees
Coral reefs are among the most sensitive ecosystems to climate change and ocean acidification.
Managing coral reefs at a time when changing sea temperatures, levels and chemistry are already
negatively affecting the capacity of hard corals to settle, grow, calcify and persist, presents a
unique set of challenges. In many reef areas, increasingly frequent environmental disturbances
combined with anthropogenic stressors are challenging the natural resilience of reef systems.
Adaptively managing coral reefs to support their resilience requires a dynamic understanding of
their current condition and the pressures that affect their future health.
Far from replacing current approaches, resilience-based management and resilience assessments
simply provide a way of optimizing established ecosystem-based management practices to
address current and future pressures. Resilience-based management (RBM) is akin to the use of
Global Positioning Systems (GPS) that allow users to successfully navigate complex routes and
adapt to changing conditions to reach a target destination. In combination with long-term trend
monitoring to validate and refine ecosystem models and current, up-to-date estimates of
pressures and ecosystem status (the starting conditions for resilience assessments), resilience-
based decision-making enables managers to identify, recommend and credibly defend short-term
tactical and long-term strategic actions into the future. Building on the GPS simile, from a
management perspective, trend monitoring is similar to a car’s rear view mirror, providing
understanding of where we have come from. Assessment of pressures and ecosystem status is
like the car windscreen that drivers respond to in real time in order to stay on course. Resilience
assessments provide the data that the GPS unit (RBM) uses to recommend one or more courses
of action to achieve an outcome. Importantly resilience-based management is not a panacea, and
its use will undoubtedly highlight winners and losers among the ecological, social and economic
values that are currently provided by coral reefs.
Iterative improvement of management actions based upon evaluation is essential to the
successful integration and use of resilience theory in conservation management. Given how busy
most reef managers are, the commitment to monitoring, evaluation and improvement is only
likely to happen if the process is simple and managers are convinced of its merit. Therefore, it is
important to: 1) show how a resilience-based approach can result in outcomes that could not be
achieved without it and 2) identify priorities/actions that would not have been apparent without
the application of RBM.
Most current marine protected areas (MPAs) were not set up for systems management or with
resilience in mind, with the notable exception of the Bahamas, which explicitly used resilience
theory in its design. The TNC R2 toolkit has been used in a number of areas for MPA design.
Broader application of resilience approaches in MPA and MPA network establishment and
management is needed. Using a resilience based approach can also strengthen the application of
existing frameworks towards EBM, such as marine spatial planning, as well as some sectoral
planning processes. Current use of resilience thinking in coastal zone management, such as

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adjusting plans for anticipated sea level rise, provides valuable precedents.
To aid understanding and build support for resilience approaches we will need a good readily
understood definition for RBM and analogies or case studies (e.g. GPS, healthcare and immune
system, fire management etc.; see Appendix 3).
Key Next Steps
Next steps presented in italics are high priorities and are also presented in the workshop
summary.
1. Define ‘resilience-based management’ in the context of ecosystem-based management/coral
reef management and communicate why it will enable managers and policy makers to deliver
conservation and ecosystem service outcomes in a changing climate.
Develop a succinct definition/description of resilience-based management, founded on the
available literature and management needs and in the context of management approaches and
principles commonly in use. Develop a communications piece that builds on the definition, and
explains why resilience matters, how it compliments current management and planning
arrangements and what managers need to do to integrate the concept into their business.
2. Develop a case study driven evidence base to support the use of resilience assessments and
resilience-based management actions.
To be effective RBM requires future focused actions based on models as well as past trends.
Gather and provide case studies and examples from conservation and other sectors to support the
use of resilience assessments and RBM (e.g. how has this influenced planning, management,
government budget allocations etc.) Highlight that developing and using projections is
challenging but useful and a normal part of many corporate business practices. Collate and share
examples of validation based improvement of predictive models to aid the understanding and
acceptance of their use among stakeholders. Where possible, gather and publicize examples of
how well resilience assessments have ‘predicted’ outcomes (see Appendix 3 for case study
ideas).
3. Develop guidelines for operationalizing resilience-based management.
a. Building on the definition and rationale for RBM adoption, provide guidance on how
resilience thinking and assessments can be built into current planning and management
processes, with examples from different organizations and jurisdictions with varying
resource bases.
b. Use the case studies provided by the group to illustrate the guidelines to demonstrate
‘where resilience plugs in’.
c. Highlight the value of taking a hierarchical approach (e.g. to resilience
assessment/monitoring) that also utilizes citizen science to improve spatial and temporal

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coverage while building community support.
d. Define the types of outputs (products) and outcomes (what does success look like?) that
users can expect from implementing the guidelines.
e. Develop a template for a communication strategy to support the adoption and
implementation of RBM – provide examples from the GBR and other locations (i.e.,
CRED: In-Brief version, Full report, Papers + buzz feeds, web based outputs?, Institute
of Development Studies.)
This effort will build on other work to better understand how managers can implement
resilience-based management. In July 2012, a workshop entitled “Operationalising resilience for
management of coral reefs” was held following the 12
th
International Coral Reef Symposium.
The workshop was co-funded by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), the
Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the United Nations Environmental Programme
(UNEP), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the NOAA CRCP.
The primary outcome from this workshop was the development of an operational Adaptive
Resilience-Based Management framework for identifying effective management options to
enhance ecological and socio-economic resilience and support management decisions that reduce
reef vulnerability (Anthony et al., 2014). In addition, Mumby et al. (2013) published
“Operationalizing the Resilience of Coral Reefs in an Era of Climate Change” which will serve
as another resource to this process.
4. Describe how integrated monitoring and evaluation is a requirement for effective resilience-
based management and how managers can adapt their current monitoring programs to inform
resilience-based management.
Package available RBM information for managers and highlight what communication and
reporting options are available to inform decision-making. ‘Outlook reports’ and maps for reefs
that summarize trend (past), status (current) and future (resilience) condition of values. Include
examples of what RBM actions actually look like e.g. adapted zoning (Bahamas) and COTS
control to support recovery (GBR).
5. Work with GCRMN to integrate resilience and future outlook in GCRMN reporting at
regional and global level. This may include providing input towards the development of
guidance for preparation of GCRMN regional reports (1
st
half 2015), as well as collaboration on
the next Global GCRMN report.
Potential output: GCRMN “Status and Outlook for Reefs of the World”; incorporating trends,
status and resilience-based outlook.
a. Report on trend (past), status (current) and future (resilience)
b. Generate predictive maps based upon past and current exposure and IPCC based
forecasts plus other relevant / available variables
c. Use the Landscape Development Intensity index to link catchments to marine systems.
d. Develop conceptual models to identify critical indicators (reconcile DPSIR with
vulnerability / resilience).

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e. Develop a template for spatial RBM plans that can be user customized to inform
decisions and maximize outcome.
Relevant references
Anderies, J.M., B.H. Walker, A.P. Kinzig. (2006). Fifteen weddings and a funeral: case studies
and resilience-based management. Ecology and Society. 11(1):21.
Anthony, K.R.N. et al. (2014). Operationalizing resilience for adaptive coral reef management
under global environmental change. Global Change Biology, doi: 10.1111/gcb.12700.
Anthony, K.R., J.A. Maynard. (2011). Coral reefs in the emergency room: continued carbon
emissions will increase the need for intensive care. Carbon Management. 2(3):215-8.
Bestelmeyer, B.T., D.D. Briske. (2012). Grand challenges for resilience-based management of
rangelands. Rangeland Ecology & Management, 65(6), 654-663.
Chapin, F.S., G.P. Kofinas, C. Folke. (2009). Principles of ecosystem stewardship. Resilience-
based natural resource management in a changing world. New York, NY, USA: Springer.
Conrad, C.C., K.G. Hilchey. (2011). A review of citizen science and community-based
environmental monitoring: issues and opportunities. Environmental monitoring and
assessment. 176(1-4):273-91.
Danielsen, F. et al. (2010). Environmental monitoring: The scale and speed of implementation
varies according to the degree of peoples involvement. Journal of Applied Ecology. 47:
1166-1168.
De’ath, G. et al. (2012). The 27–year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its
causes. Proceedings of the Nat Acad of Sci. 109(44):17995-17999.
Edwards, A.J., E.D. Gomez. (2007). Reef restoration concepts and guidelines: making sensible
management choices in the face of uncertainty.
Game, E.T. et al. (2008). Should we protect the strong or the weak? Risk, resilience, and the
selection of marine protected areas. Conservation Biology. 22(6):1619-29.
Graham, N., K. Nash, J. Kool. (2011). Coral reef recovery dynamics in a changing world, Coral
Reefs. 30(2):283-94.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. (2012). Climate Change Adaptation: Outcomes from
the Great Barrier Reef Climate Change Action Plan 2007–2012. Great Barrier Reef Marine
Park Authority, Townsville.
Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. (2013). Reef Health Incident Response System, eds
RJ, Beeden, JA, Maynard & PA, Marshall, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority,
Townsville. <http://elibrary.gbrmpa.gov.au/jspui/handle/11017/2808>
Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (2011). Coral reef ecosystems and anthropogenic climate change. Regional
Environmental Change. 11(1):215-27.
Hughes, T.P. et al. (2010). Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience. Trends in
ecology & evolution, 25(11):633-42.
Levin, S.A., J. Lubchenco. (2008). Resilience, robustness, and marine ecosystem-based
management. Bioscience, 58(1):27-32.

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Maynard, J, et al. (2010) Building resilience into practical conservation: identifying local
management responses to global climate change in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Coral
Reefs, 29(2):381-91.
Mumby, P.J. et al. (2011) Revisiting climate thresholds and ecosystem collapse. Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment. 9(2):94-6.
Mumby, P.J., I. Chollett, Y.M. Bozec, N.H. Wolff. (2014). Ecological resilience, robustness and
vulnerability: how do these concepts benefit ecosystem management? Current Opinion in
Environmental Sustainability. 7:22-27.
Plummer, R., D. Armitage. (2007). A resilience-based framework for evaluating adaptive co-
management: Linking ecology, economics and society in a complex world, Ecological
economics. 61(1):62-74.
van Hooidonk et al. (2014). Opposite latitudinal gradients in projected ocean acidification and
bleaching impacts on coral reefs. Global Change Biology. 20:103–112, doi:
10.1111/gcb.12394.
Wooldridge, A. (2010). Is the coral algae symbiosis really ‘mutually beneficial’ for the partners?
BioEssays 32 (7), 615-625.

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United States Department of Commerce
Penny S. Pritzker
Secretary
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan
Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmospheres
National Ocean Service
Dr. Russell Callender
Assistant Administrator for the National Ocean Service
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