Using community composition and successional theory to guide site-specific coral reef management

High spatial or temporal variability in community composition makes it challenging for natural resource managers to predict ecosystem trajectories at scales relevant to management. This is commonly the case in nearshore marine environments, where the frequency and intensity of disturbance events varies at the sub-kilometer to meter scale, creating a patchwork of successional stages within a single ecosystem. The successional stage of a community impacts its stability, recovery potential, and trajectory over time in predictable ways. Here we demonstrate the value of successional theory for interpreting fine-scale community heterogeneity using Hawaiian coral reefs as a case study. We tracked benthic community dynamics on 36 forereefs over a six-year period (2017–2023) that captures impacts from high surf events, a marine heatwave, and unprecedented shifts in human behavior due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We document high spatial variation in benthic community composition that was only parti..., Data Collection and Processing
We surveyed 36 fixed long-term monitoring sites in the Maui Nui region using large-area imagery, also known as Structure from Motion photogrammetry. We completed our first survey between July 2016 and July 2017, and resurveyed sites in 2019, 2021, and 2023. Most sites were surveyed four times (n = 30), while a minority were surveyed only three times (n = 2) or twice (n = 4). An interactive map of these data is available here. Surveys were completed as part of the 100 Island Challenge, a broader effort to document global patterns of coral reef condition and change over time. Sites were confined to forereef habitat with leeward exposure at approximately 10m depth to decrease environmental differences and enable fine-scale comparisons between sites, with eight to twelve sites selected per island. Several sites on Maui and Moloka'i are positioned close to or overlap with fixed long-term CRAMP transects maintained by the state of Hawai'i.
Our large-area imaging..., , # Data from: Using community composition and successional theory to guide site-specific coral reef management

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.15dv41p6r](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.15dv41p6r)

## Description of the data and file structure

Benthic and environmental data are contained in four .csv files:

* **Maui Nui monitoring program metadata.csv** lists the island, site name, and coordinates of all sites in our large-area imagery Maui Nui monitoring program, including 16 sites not included in McCarthy et al. 2025. The year_month that each site was established and resurveyed is clearly indicated. This data covers 2014-2024.
* **Maui Nui benthic data final.csv** includes the following data for each of the 36 sites included in McCarthy et al. 2025 in each year they were surveyed:
* ind: A unique identifying string combining the island code, year surveyed, and site abbreviation (e.g., KAH_2016_01 for Kaho'olawe site 1 surveyed in 2016)
* Latitude: decimal coordinates for latitude
...