Coral reef restoration monitoring guide: Methods to evaluate restoration success from local to ecosystem scales.

Abstract

As coral restoration efforts continue to increase in size and number, there is an overwhelming need to define restoration success and determine progress towards successful restoration. Meaningful, consistent, comparable, and quantitative data is required to quantify the changes that result from restoration actions. However, there may be many definitions of success depending on the program or project goal(s). Restorations can have one or many goals that can be very different (e.g., ecological, educational), and therefore, goals cannot be addressed in a “one size fits all” monitoring approach. The application of quantitative approaches to monitoring not only provides a reliable way to evaluate progress towards restoration success, but also provides means to identify problems and apply adaptive management efforts as needed. The CRC established a priority for the Restoration Monitoring Working Group to develop guidance for monitoring coral reef restorations and to determine restoration success. This “Coral Reef Restoration Monitoring Guide: Best Practices for Monitoring Coral Restorations from Local to Ecosystem Scales” was developed for practitioners and programs in any stage of their practice: from starting up a new restoration effort, to scaling up current efforts, to improving efficiency. Coral restoration practitioners can use the hypotheses- and datadriven monitoring framework presented in this Guide to make confident comparisons between projects, programs, and regions, increase the efficiency of data collection, and make informed decisions about the data necessary to describe the success of the restoration goal or objective. Two categories of coral restoration monitoring metrics are included in this Guide: Universal Metrics and Goal-Based Performance Metrics. The four Universal Metrics, Landscape/ Reef-level, Population-level, Colony-level, and Genetic and Genotypic Diversity, are suggested as basic requirements for monitoring all restoration projects, regardless of the goal of the project. These metrics provide data on restoration scale, growth, survival, and diversity, yet require minimal equipment and time. These Universal Metrics should be monitored on any restoration project regardless of the restoration scale, species, habitat, location, expertise, or budget. Goal-Based Performance Metrics address five major coral restoration goals: Ecological Restoration, Socioeconomic, Eventdriven Restoration, Climate Change Adaptation, and Research. Metrics are tailored within each goal to address key components of the goal. For example, when monitoring a restoration with an ecological goal, a practitioner should evaluate coral condition, species diversity, habitat quality, and vertebrate and invertebrate communities, and potentially others. Metrics are detailed for each goal including key points, suggested methods, reporting guidelines, and criteria to evaluate the performance towards the restoration goal and towards restoration success. Coral reef restoration, while a quickly growing field, is still relatively new. This document is the first to provide comprehensive guidance for monitoring coral restorations to evaluate progress towards meeting restoration goals. Metrics and associated methods developed herein are based on our experiences, working group and workshop input, practitioner interviews, and current published peer reviewed literature and manuals. While every effort was made to address every situation, we recognize that as this field develops and the metrics are ful ly vetted, some metrics may need to be improved, modified, or deemed unnecessary. We therefore encourage the evolution of this Guide as a living document to be updated when necessary to be relevant and representative. Our experiences and the examples provided are mainly from the greater Caribbean region; however, reviews and feedback from practitioners who have worked globally indicate that the metrics developed are applicable on coral restorations in all regions. This Guide should be used to measure and describe the progress of coral restoration projects towards meeting restoration goals. The CRC Monitoring Working Group has also developed a Coral Restoration Database and Evaluation Tool to be complementary to this Guide and used together. The Coral Restoration Database allows the input of comparable restoration projects and monitoring data. The Coral Restoration Evaluation Tool allows the practitioner to score the performance of their project, program, or region and determine what is working well and what needs improvement. The use of this Guide and feedback provided by practitioners will improve the evaluation of coral restoration success.