Mapping Coral Health Dynamics at Cheeca Rocks (2012–2018)
A Colony-Level Analysis of Bleaching, Spatial Structure, and Mortality Using High-Resolution Photomosaics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54691/hwd81b40Keywords:
Coral bleaching, mortality, spatial structure, photomosaics, TagLab; ArcGIS Pro, Cheeca Rocks, thermal stress.Abstract
High-resolution mosaic images and spatially matched polygon data were taken from Cheeca Rocks transect 1 (2012–2014); these data were used to examine spatial structure, bleaching responses, and short-term death rates at the colony level for four coral taxa: Orbicella annularis (OANN, formerly MANN), Porites astreoides (PAST), Porites porites (PPOR), and Siderastrea siderea (SSID); TagLab annotations, nearest-neighbor distance calculations in ArcGIS Pro, and bleaching and death metrics generated in R Studio were combined, and changes in the coral community at the scale of individual colonies were recorded. The results showed that 2014 had the strongest bleaching during the study period; in September 2014, nearly 100% of OANN and PPOR colonies were bleached, PAST was around 20%, and SSID stayed at 0% in all surveys; the death patterns followed the same trend, OANN and PAST decreased over the whole study period, and PAST had the largest loss (−25%) between 2013 and August 2014, while PPOR had a moderate decline (−11.4%) during the same time and no death was recorded for SSID; for colony spacing, only OANN showed clear differences in the average distance to nearest neighbor, and the other species kept relatively stable spacing patterns from 2012 to 2014. Overall, it was shown by the results that the high temperature event in 2014 was the main reason for the bleaching and population loss at Cheeca Rocks; at the same time, the ability of each species to tolerate heat was a key factor in deciding how the coral community responded; when the 2015–2018 aligned photomosaic layers are added in future work, it will be possible to look more completely at long-term recovery, changes in spatial arrangement, and the effects of repeated disturbances under continued climate stress.
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