High sedimentation rates have well-documented, deleterious impacts on coral reefs. However, few previous studies have attempted to quantitatively describe a coral reef community across a large continuous sediment gradient. In this study distinct benthic assemblages in Fouha Bay, Guam, were identified using a Moving Window Analysis conducted along a two-order of magnitude sediment gradient, with transition boundaries that were generally consistent with sediment thresholds identified in the literature. Coral richness dropped exponentially with increasing sedimentation rate. Richness was nearly three times greater in assemblages with sedimentation rates <10 mg cm-2 d-1 compared to assemblages experiencing rates between 10 and 50 mg cm-2 d-1, and nearly 30 times greater than assemblages experiencing rates between 50 and 100 mg cm-2 d-1. No corals were found in assemblages with sedimentation rates >110 mg cm-2 d-1. Reducing sedimentation in this area could result in a shift of more diverse and abundant coral assemblages toward the head of the bay.

Local management action to address coral-reef stressors can improve reef health and mitigate the effects of global climate change. Coastal development and runoff lead to sedimentation, which directly impacts coral recruitment, growth, mortality, and the ecosystem services that coral reefs provide. Decision making for reef resilience in the face of global and local stressors requires information on thresholds for management action. In response to needs identified by reef managers, we plan to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis that will explore the effects of both deposited and suspended sediment on corals to identify single and interacting stressor thresholds. We will identify levels of sediment exposure (i.e., concentration, duration, and frequency) that cause adverse physical, physiological, behavioral, developmental, and ecological responses in coral and describe geographic and taxonomic patterns in these responses. Our ultimate goal is to provide managers with sediment exposure thresholds that can be expected to cause these responses. Our systematic review will synthesize available evidence on the effects of suspended and deposited sediment on corals. The research questions were formulated with an advisory team to support management decisions concerning local reef stressors in waters under U.S. federal jurisdiction. While the advisory team is most concerned with reefs adjacent to U.S. Pacific Islands, our review will include studies that examine reef-building coral species around the world. We will search online databases and grey literature to obtain a list of potential studies, assess their relevance, and critically appraise them for validity and risk of bias. Provided enough data can be extracted from relevant experimental studies, we will conduct meta-analyses that examine changes in coral health and survival in response to suspended and/or deposited sediment, with the goal to define sediment thresholds for reef managers. If enough data are available from within the U.S. Pacific Islands, we will construct region-, site-, and/or species-specific thresholds to improve local management.

Background Local management action to address coral-reef stressors can improve reef health and mitigate the effects of global climate change. Coastal development and runoff lead to sedimentation, which directly impacts coral recruitment, growth, mortality, and the ecosystem services that coral reefs provide. Decision making for reef resilience in the face of global and local stressors requires information on thresholds for management action. In response to needs identified by reef managers, we plan to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis that will explore the effects of both deposited and suspended sediment on corals to identify single and interacting stressor thresholds. We will identify levels of sediment exposure (i.e., concentration, duration, and frequency) that cause adverse physical, physiological, behavioral, developmental, and ecological responses in coral and describe geographic and taxonomic patterns in these responses. Our ultimate goal is to provide managers with sediment exposure thresholds that can be expected to cause these responses. Methods Our systematic review will synthesize available evidence on the effects of suspended and deposited sediment on corals. The research questions were formulated with an advisory team to support management decisions concerning local reef stressors in waters under U.S. federal jurisdiction. While the advisory team is most concerned with reefs adjacent to U.S. Pacific Islands, our review will include studies that examine reef-building coral species around the world. We will search online databases and grey literature to obtain a list of potential studies, assess their relevance, and critically appraise them for validity and risk of bias. Provided enough data can be extracted from relevant experimental studies, we will conduct meta-analyses that examine changes in coral health and survival in response to suspended and/or deposited sediment, with the goal to define sediment thresholds for reef managers. If enough data are available from within the U.S. Pacific Islands, we will construct region-, site-, and/or species-specific thresholds to improve local management.

Due to climate change, coral reefs have experienced mass bleaching, and mortality events in recent years. Although coral reefs are unlikely to persist in their current form unless climate change can be addressed, local management can have a role to play by extending the time frame over which there are functional reef systems capable of recovery. Here we consider the potential application of one form of local management – management of herbivorous fishes. The premise behind this approach is that increased herbivory could shift reef algal assemblages to states that are benign or beneficial for corals, thereby increasing corals’ ability to recover from destructive events such as bleaching and to thrive in periods between events. With a focus on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, we review what is known about the underlying processes of herbivory and coral-algal competition that ultimately affect the ability of corals to grow, persist, and replenish themselves. We then critically assess evidence of effectiveness or otherwise of herbivore management within marine protected areas (MPAs) to better understand why many MPAs have not improved outcomes for corals, and more importantly to identify the circumstances in which that form of management would be most likely to be effective. Herbivore management is not a panacea, but has the potential to enhance coral reef persistence in the right circumstances. Those include that: (i) absent management, there is an “algal problem” – i.e., insufficient herbivory to maintain algae in states that are benign or beneficial for corals; and (ii) management actions are able to increase net herbivory. As increased corallivory is a potentially widespread negative consequence of management, we consider some of the circumstances in which that is most likely to be a problem as well as potential solutions. Because the negative effects of certain algae are greatest for coral settlement and early survivorship, it may be that maintaining sufficient herbivory is particularly important in promoting recovery from destructive events such as mass bleaching. Thus, herbivore management can have a role to play as part of a wider strategy to manage and reduce the threats that currently imperil coral reefs.

Earlier declines in marine resources, combined with current fishing pressures and devastating coral mortality in 2015, have resulted in a degraded coral reef ecosystem state at Puakō in West Hawaiʹi. Changes to resource management are needed to facilitate recovery of ecosystem functions and services. We developed a customised ecosystem model to evaluate the performance of alternative management scenarios at Puakō in the provisioning of ecosystem services to human users (marine tourists, recreational fishers) and enhancing the reef's ability to recover from pressures (resilience). Outcomes of the continuation of current management plus five alternative management scenarios were compared under both high and low coral-bleaching related mortality over a 15-year time span. Current management is not adequate to prevent further declines in marine resources. Fishing effort is already above the multispecies sustainable yield, and, at its current level, will likely lead to a shift to algal-dominated reefs and greater abundance of undesirable fish species. Scenarios banning all gears other than line fishing, or prohibiting take of herbivorous fishes, were most effective at enhancing reef structure and resilience, dive tourism, and the recreational fishery. Allowing only line fishing generated the most balanced trade-off between stakeholders, with positive gains in both ecosystem resilience and dive tourism, while only moderately decreasing fishery value within the area. Synthesis and applications. Our customised ecosystem model projects the impacts of multiple, simultaneous pressures on a reef ecosystem. Trade-offs of alternative approaches identified by local managers were quantified based on indicators for different ecosystem services (e.g. ecosystem resilience, recreation, food). This approach informs managers of potential conflicts among stakeholders and provides guidance on approaches that better balance conservation objectives and stakeholders’ interests. Our results indicate that a combination of reducing land-based pollution and allowing only line fishing generated the most balanced trade-off between stakeholders and will enhance reef recovery from the detrimental effects of coral bleaching events that are expected over the next 15 years.

Environmental restoration projects are commonly touted for their ecological positives, but such projects can also provide significant socioeconomic and cultural benefits to local communities. We assessed the social dimensions of a large-scale coral reef restoration project in Maunalua Bay, O‘ahu, where >1.32 million kg of invasive marine macroalgae was removed from 11 hectares (90,000 m2; 23 acres) of impacted coral reef in an urbanized setting. We interviewed 131 community stakeholders and analyzed both quantitative and qualitative data to assess human uses of the environment, assess perceptions of environmental health, and characterize social dimensions (+/−) associated with the invasive algae removal effort. Results indicate substantial direct economic benefits, including the creation of more than 60+ jobs, benefiting more than 250 individuals and 81 households. The project helped develop a skilled workforce in a local business dedicated to environmental restoration and increased the capacity of community organizations to address other threats to reefs and watersheds. Other major benefits include revitalization of Native Hawaiian cultural practices and traditions and the successful use of harvested invasive algae as compost by local farmers. Our results show the project heightened community awareness and a broader sense of stewardship in the area, creating enabling conditions for collective community action. Our findings show that restoration projects that explicitly incorporate efforts to build community awareness, involvement, and a shared responsibility for a site may ultimately create the long-term capacity for sustainable stewardship programs. We conclude by discussing lessons learned for engaging productively with communities in environmental restoration and stewardship, which remains a central focus in conservation worldwide.

health in South Kohala Courtney S. Couch, Rebecca Most, Chad Wiggins, Dwayne Minton, Eric Conklin, Jamie Sziklay, Russell Amimoto, Kydd Pollock, Zachary Caldwell October 2014 Final Report to Hawai‘i Division of Aquatic Resources NA11NOS4820006 Hawaii Coral Reef Management Grant NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program Award to State of Hawaii Department of Land & Natural Resources, Division of Aquatic Resources 1 Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, PO Box 1346, Kaneohe, HI 96744 The Nature Conservancy, 923 Nu'uana Ave., Honolulu, HI 96817

Some major anthropogenic stressors have impacts that occur at infrequent, unpredictable intervals; their effects are difficult to evaluate in a timely manner unless space is substituted for time. In this paper we substitute space for time along an environmental gradient that aliases a predicted temporal response to habitat restoration. We herein describe a 3-year study that combined field experiments and descriptive surveys of a fringing reef at Pelekane Bay, west Hawaii, along a sedimentation gradient from an intermittent stream that episodically discharges from the Kohala Watershed. This degraded watershed is now being restored by grazer exclusion, habitat engineering, and replanting of native flora. Sediment traps, arrays of settling plates, marked branches of endemic finger coral Porites compressa , together with surveys of benthic composition, densities of recruits of economically important parrotfishes, and the relative use of corals by fish recruits, were evaluated during the summers of 2010–2012. As expected, sediment accumulation rate decreased while all coral metrics and the densities, use, and preference of corals by recruit fishes generally increased with distance from the point of sediment discharge. Proportionate abundances of recruit through large adult-sized parrotfishes, overlayed on distributions (mapped by separate study) of sediment impact, allowed us to estimate, as an example, the amount and value of parrotfish rersources that are being unrealized because of sediment impacts on recruit parrotfish. Our Pelekane Bay case study thus illustrates how “space-for-time” substitution can be efficiently applied in an evaluation of potential watershed reclamation of reef resources—at a time considerably prior to likely temporal responses of the reef and its resources to watershed restoration.

Coral reefs in Micronesia and American Samoa appear to be amongst the most resilient in the world, despite numerous on-going threats; There has been considerable recovery of reefs in western Micronesia (especially Palau) that were devastated during the massive coral bleaching in 1998; The more remote islands support thriving communities of large reef fishes due to limited fishing pressures and habitat degradation; Fish populations around major population centres show clear signs of over-fishing with few large fish observed because of fishing pressure, particularly spear-fishers using scuba; Management and monitoring efforts are on-going throughout the region and numerous effective initiatives are promoting recovery of damaged coral reefs as well as the conservation of healthy ones; Lack of enforcement continues to be one of the major hindrances to effective resource management outcomes and more support is necessary.

Sedimentation as the result of runoff is the principle human-caused threat to the environment in general and the water quality in particular in the Pacific island of Guam. Runoff water is characterized by flash floods of high velocity, but short duration. The rapid flow is attributed to low soil infiltration, a high proportion of rain converted to overland flow, and scanty or absent vegetation cover due to wildfires. In the areas where protective vegetation cover is lowest, the soil is subjected to the high shearing force by such an overland flow. Erosion damage is a serious problem to the environmental ecosystem of the island. Sediment lost to erosion clogs rivers, lakes, and waterways. Erosion and sedimentation loss are also a major source of water-quality problems in Guam. Sedimentation provides a vehicle for the transport of agricultural chemical residues into the canals, streams, rivers and eventually the near-shore ecosystems, where it damages coral reefs. The objective of the project reported here was to assess the sediment-loading rate to the near-shore coral reef originating from the upland watershed. The effectiveness of vetiver systems (VS) as a sediment trap and its effect on quality of the water leaving the upland watershed was evaluated. Four plots (22 x 1.5 m) were laid out on a uniformly sloped (12%) watershed for estimation of sedimentation rates. Each plot was equipped with 20 cm high flume wall, which separated its surface from those of the other plots and their surroundings. Flumes are equipped with cone-shaped weirs that directed the runoff and sediments into a collecting tank beneath the weirs. In order to evaluate the effect of different soil surface management on erosion and quantify the sedimentation and turbidity of the runoff water from each plot, the following treatments were examined at this particular watershed: (i) Natural vegetation ‘as it is’ treatment, (ii) ‘Vs’ treatment as a restoration technique, (iii) ‘Controlled burn’ treatment, (iv) ‘Exposed surface-no-cover’ treatment. The above-mentioned treatments represent a wide range of conditions that are present in a typical watershed area in southern Guam.

INTRODUCTION AND SETTING This report is an assessment of the status of coral reef ecosystems in Guam from 2002 to 2004. Data on coral reef ecosystems were synthesized from assessments and monitoring programs conducted by local and federal organizations. Included in the report are assessments of the environmental and anthropogenic stressors affecting coral reefs, information on data gathering activities and the condition of coral reef ecosystem resources, a description of current conservation management activities, and overall conclusions and recommendations to monitor and manage coral reef ecosystems better in the future.

Interactions between biotic and abiotic factors are considered to be the principal mechanisms controlling the dynamics of rocky shore communities. Unfortunately, little research has examined how these factors affect community structure of tropical rocky shore assemblages. We examined the effects of wave action and desiccation on a rocky shore molluscan assemblage on the north shore of Jamaica. This assemblage exists entirely above mean high water (MHW), where physical factors were expected to be more important than biological factors. We compared the molluscan assemblage along ten vertical transects exposed to different levels of wave action and desiccation potential. In all, nineteen species of mollusk were observed, thirteen of which occurred on > 50% of our transects. We found no differences in species number, individual densities, or the vertical distribution of the species between transects with differing levels of wave action or desiccation potential. Correspondence analysis revealed differences in assemblage structure, but the differences were not associated with wave action or desiccation, suggesting that these physical factors are not operating at the spatial scale studied. However, gastropod mollusks preferentially occupied pit and crevice microhabitats, which are believed to mediate physical stresses. The distribution of these rocky shore mollusks may be the result of the availability of, and competition for, these sheltered microhabitats.

Many visions of the future exist&emdash;a vision for every man, woman, and child that inhabits this Earth. Visions are individualized, colored by the experiences of the dreamer, the prophet, or the futurist, but some visions share common threads and agents of social change, that is, what drives the evolution of human culture. Jim Dator (1993) has outlined what he calls five "tsunamis" of change. These include demographics, economics, the environment, technology, and politics. This paper will examine only one of these "tsunamis"&emdash;technology. Specifically, one aspect of technology that will be important in shaping human society in the coming years will be investigated. That technology is genetic engineering, the ability to mechanically alter the basic plan of life and, in essence, manufacture living organisms.