Data Visualization Tool for Monitoring Coral Reefs in American Samoa The Journal of Ocean Technology

To gauge the status and trends of coral reef ecosystems, federal and local agencies in American Samoa conduct monitoring programs that assess benthic cover, reef fish populations, and environmental conditions such as temperature and water quality. However, these coral reef monitoring programs vary in terms of survey areas, methodologies, and time scales. As a result, disparate datasets on similar metrics (e.g., coral cover, fish abundance, environmental data) complicate the task of understanding the full extent of changes across reefs on different islands. To address this challenge, there is a pressing need to collate, integrate, and synthesize decades of monitoring data from American Samoa’s coral reefs. Here, we introduce a data visualization tool that can be used by scientists, resource managers, and community members to make informed decisions about their resources.