INSEAD Annual Report 2023-20143 test - Flipbook - Page 35
Our Impact in 2022
Marine Science 2023
33
This paper is led by one of the programme’s PhD
students and uses satellite technology to monitor
some of the world’s most remote and vulnerable
coral reefs and, for the first time, observe multiple
climate change related stressors from open- source
data. The team created a Reef Environmental Stress
Exposure Toolbox (RESET) from the readily available
Google Earth Engine geospatial processing platform.
Using the satellite data to collate nine environmental
variables (cloud cover, current, depth, salinity,
wind, and four sea surface temperature- based
metrics), they were able to map out combinations of
environmental stressors caused by climate change
and monitor the reefs all year-round.
Monitoring shallow
coral reef exposure to
environmental stressors
using satellite earth
observation: the reef
environmental stress
exposure toolbox
Williamson, M.J., Tebbs,E.J., Dawson, T.P.,
Thompson, H.J., Head, C.E.I., Jacoby, D.M.P.
(2022) ‘Monitoring shallow coral reef exposure
to environmental stressors using satellite earth
observation: the reef environmental stress exposure
toolbox (RESET)’ – Remote Sensing Ecology and
Conservation
https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.286
Data were used from 3,157 coral reef locations
around the globe, including twelve major ocean
ecosystem regions. These included the Chagos
Archipelago, coral reefs off the coast of the Gilbert
Islands in the South Pacific and in the Red Sea. To
test the capabilities of RESET, occurrences of El
Niño were used to test the toolkit’s ability to capture
variability during these extreme climatic events
which are well known for damaging reefs by coral
bleaching. By comparing coral reefs at times when El
Niño occurred with ‘usual’ conditions the study found
that depth, degree heating weeks, and sea surface
temperature anomalies were the potential drivers
of inter- and intra-region variation in environmental
stress exposure.
RESET provides an open access, easily interpretable
set of tools and associated indices for monitoring
environmental stress exposure on coral reefs and is
designed to inform conservation and management
decisions. As such, RESET has broad potential
to assist in the monitoring of imperilled coral
ecosystems, in particular, those that are remote
or inaccessible.
