Integrating near real-time data for coral reef ecological forecasting

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has committed to integrating ocean data from a variety of sources into an Integrated Ocean Observing System, and to work towards operational ecological forecasting as part of its Ecosystem Approach to Management. Consistent with this, NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program has committed to integrating coral data from a variety of sources for the specific benefit of coral reef researchers and Marine Protected Area (MPA) managers; and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), together with its NOAA and academic research partners, is contributing to this goal through their Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) project. ICON provides Web-based software to integrate satellite, monitoring station (in situ), and radar data sources in near real-time; and utilizes an inference engine (artificial intelligence software) to provide ecological forecasts using some or all of these data. The capabilities of ICON software were initially focused upon one area in particular, Molasses Reef in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, to provide proof-of-concept, and to provide a “discovery prototype” for consideration by the MPA managers assembled at the GCFI conference. Since GCFI 59, this focus has expanded to stations throughout the Caribbean, as well as those on the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef in Australia. Feedback to ICON developers from MPA managers – based upon their own specific management requirements and priorities, and knowledge of the prototype capabilities – is essential to set priorities and enable additional ICON software engineering specifically tailored to MPA managers’ needs. Featured in the prototype are several levels of user access: layperson, researcher, site maintainer, MPA manager, and software developer colleague. Depending upon user access, information products can include recent and historical single-source and integrated data output, custom graphics output, and ecological forecasts for coral bleaching, coral spawning, upwelling, pollution impacts, meteorological extremes, and larval drift.