The goal of the Guam Long-term Coral Reef Monitoring Program is not only to document what organisms are present in Guam’s coastal waters, but also to supply information which will help scientists and managers effectively manage Guam’s coral reef resources.
While data collection officially began in 2010, the idea for the monitoring program began in 2006. In 2007, a group of Guam’s coral reef resource managers, headed by a monitoring coordinator, collaborated to produce a long-term monitoring strategy which would:
1) develop a long-term monitoring program which will allow managers to detect changes in reef health over time, and to give them an opportunity to respond to these changes in a timely manner, and
2) provide the island’s coral reef managers, researchers, policy makers, resource users, and the general public with a better understanding of the health of Guam’s reefs.
With an updated monitoring strategy and an adaptive monitoring approach, the long-term monitoring program has been able to establish monitoring stations at seven high priority sites around Guam.
Guam Long-Term Coral Reef Monitoring program 