Abstract

Modern programs of biodiversity monitoring are engineered to rapidly assess abundance trends and diffuse the information for decision making and policy intervention. In coral reef conservation, global efforts focus on assessing abundance trends of coral communities across broad ecological and spatial levels. In this talk, we introduce ReefCloud - an online platform designed to help Pacific island nations monitor and manage their coral reefs. The framework uses a combination of AI-powered analyses to detect benthic communities in images and spatio-temporal modelling to scale predictions of coral trends across regions and address uncertainty. Integrating data from various monitoring programs enables to reduce uncertainty in coral predictions. However, monitoring efforts are fragmented, with numerous organizations collecting data across different regions for diverse management purposes. We present two case studies from different coral reef regions to demonstrate how ReefCloud handles multiple data generation processes, along with spatio-temporal variability and uncertainty. Successful data integration enhances the ability to make more robust assessments of coral changes across different spatial and temporal scales. This approach opens up new avenues for further research, exploring additional combinations of data sources to improve our understanding of coral reef changes and inform management strategies.