Mission: Iconic Reefs Environmental Monitoring
Monitoring Impacts of Changing Ocean Conditions on US Coral Reefs
SCROLL TO LEARN MORE
What We Do
Monitoring Coral Reefs in Real-Time
AOML Coral Program scientists are assessing the impacts of ocean acidification and rising sea surface temperatures on coral reef ecosystems within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in real-time. By deploying buoys at four of the seven Mission: Iconic Reefs, our team is constantly collecting crucial data to monitor changes in conditions such as pH, temperature and wave energy in near-real time.
Click the icons to explore:
Who We Are
| Tyler Christian
Mission: Iconic Reef Environmental Monitoring Coordinator
Project Background
For thousands of years, the coral reefs along Florida’s coast, stretching from Biscayne Bay to the Dry Tortugas, have been thriving ecosystems supporting diverse marine life. These reefs form a vital barrier spanning over one hundred miles, crucial for the Florida Keys marine ecosystem and economy. However, in recent years, various environmental stressors have led to a decline in the health of these reefs. The decline of these reefs is concerning not only for their ecological importance but also for their cultural and economic significance to the Florida Keys.
This project aims to conduct comprehensive environmental monitoring at designated sites, focusing on factors like ocean acidification and warming through the use of high-resolution colorimetric pH loggers (SAMI-pH) that will describe temporal variation in pH at diel and seasonal scales at four MIR sites. Gathering this data and displaying it in real time will allow for a better understanding of the ocean chemistry on these reefs and will allow for focused and intentional restoration practices in the future.
Key Impacts & Findings
The goal of Mission: Iconic Reefs Environmental Monitoring is to address ocean acidification (OA) and other environmental stressors by identifying and communicating risks and vulnerabilities confronting Florida’s coral reef ecosystems. Understanding the reef environments through the data gathered by this instrumentation is a means towards devising enhanced strategic management of coral reef ecosystems through improved and applied understanding, forecasting, and projecting the of OA impacts. The FKNMS is unique within the greater Caribbean/Atlantic reef systems whereby it exhibits extreme seasonal ranges in carbonate chemistry with highly elevated carbonate mineral saturation states in the summer and very low values in the winter months. Thus, the reef communities of the FKNMS can offer valuable insight with regards to how reefs might respond to future OA.
Mission: Iconic Reefs Environmental Monitoring
This application aims to provide a platform for ocean chemistry and sea state data related to the seven reefs in Mission: Iconic Reefs (M:IR) located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS). Clicking on the Buoy markers in the interactive map will allow you to see the most current data. The tabs below will allow access to each individual reef. Through this you can learn more about the reef site, see plotted data for wave height, wind speed, sea surface and floor temperature, and pH recorded from the seafloor.
Featured Publication
John T. Morris, Ian C. Enochs, et al.
Coral reef habitat is created when calcium carbonate production by calcifiers exceeds removal by physical and biological erosion. Carbonate budget surveys provide a means of quantifying the framework-altering actions of diverse assemblages of marine species to determine net carbonate production, a single metric that encapsulates reef habitat persistence. In this study, carbonate budgets were calculated for 723 sites across the Florida Reef Tract (FRT) using benthic cover and parrot fish demographic data from NOAA’s National Coral Reef Monitoring Program, as well as high resolution LiDAR topobathymetry. Results highlight the erosional state of the majority of the study sites, with a trend towards more vulnerable habitat in the northern FRT, especially in the Southeast Florida region (− 0.51 kg CaCO3m−2 year−1), which is in close proximity to urban centers. Detailed comparison of reef types reveals that mid-channel reefs in the Florida Keys have the highest net carbonate production (0.84 kg CaCO3 m−2 year− 1) and indicates that these reefs may be hold-outs for reef development throughout the region. This study reports that Florida reefs, specifically their physical structure, are in a net erosional state. As these reefs lose structure, the ecosystem services they provide will be diminished, signifying the importance of increased protections and management efforts to offset these trends.
Low Net Carbonate Accretion Characterizes Florida’s Coral Reef
John T. Morris, Ian C. Enochs, et al.
Coral reef habitat is created when calcium carbonate production by calcifiers exceeds removal by physical and biological erosion. Carbonate budget surveys provide a means of quantifying the framework-altering actions of diverse assemblages of marine species to determine net carbonate production, a single metric that encapsulates reef habitat persistence. In this study, carbonate budgets were calculated for 723 sites across the Florida Reef Tract (FRT) using benthic cover and parrot fish demographic data from NOAA’s National Coral Reef Monitoring Program, as well as high resolution LiDAR topobathymetry. Results highlight the erosional state of the majority of the study sites, with a trend towards more vulnerable habitat in the northern FRT, especially in the Southeast Florida region (− 0.51 kg CaCO3m−2 year−1), which is in close proximity to urban centers. Detailed comparison of reef types reveals that mid-channel reefs in the Florida Keys have the highest net carbonate production (0.84 kg CaCO3 m−2 year− 1) and indicates that these reefs may be hold-outs for reef development throughout the region. This study reports that Florida reefs, specifically their physical structure, are in a net erosional state. As these reefs lose structure, the ecosystem services they provide will be diminished, signifying the importance of increased protections and management efforts to offset these trends.
Publications & References
Click to Expand List
Gill, T. J., Jankulak, M., Osborne, J., Kiel, P. M., Palacio-Castro, A. M., & Enochs, I. C. (2026). Real-time acidification monitoring through Sofar buoy and SAMI-pH integration. HardwareX, e00772. PaperManzello, D. P., Kolodziej, G., Kirkland, A., Besemer, N., & Enochs, I. C. (2021). Increasing coral calcification in Orbicella faveolata and Pseudodiploria strigosa at Flower Garden Banks, Gulf of America. Coral Reefs, 1-15.
PaperHu, X., M.F. Nuttall, H. Wang, H. Yao, C.J. Staryk, M.M. McCutcheon, R.J. Eckert, J.A. Embresi, M.A. Johnston, E.L. Hickerson, G.P. Schmahl, D.P. Manzello, I.C. Enochs, S. DiMarco, and L. Barbero. Seasonal variability of carbonate chemistry and decadal changes in waters of a marine sanctuary in the northwestern Gulf of America. Marine Chemistry, 205:16-28, doi:10.1016/j.marchem.2018.07.006 2018 FY2018. Paper
Manzello, D. P., Enochs, I. C., Kolodziej, G., & Carlton, R. (2015). Recent decade of growth and calcification of Orbicella faveolata in the Florida Keys: an inshore-offshore comparison. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 521, 81-89. Paper
Manzello, D. P., Enochs, I. C., Melo, N., Gledhill, D. K., & Johns, E. M. (2012). Ocean acidification refugia of the Florida Reef Tract. PloS one, 7(7), e41715. Paper
U.S. Coral Reefs Status Report
NOAA’s National Coral Reef Monitoring Program Releases 2020 Coral Reef Status Report
In Fall 2020, NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) released the National Status Report for U.S. Coral Reefs. The Coral Reef Conservation Program supports the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program throughout the U.S. Pacific, Atlantic, Gulf of America, and Caribbean coral reef areas.
The report provides a high-level overview – capturing the time period from 2012-2018 – of coral reef health for all of the U.S. coral reefs in the Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of America. The report is the culmination of a five-year collaboration between CRCP, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Integration and Application Network, and numerous partners in every jurisdiction from state and territorial governments, academia and non-governmental organizations.
Funding Sources and Partners
