Development and implementation of a coral health assessment tool for St. John, USVI

Abstract

Coral health in St. John, US Virgin Islands, has shown tremendous declines in recent years, with more than 50% declines in live coral cover. As one component of a group project to assess the possible impacts of anthropogenic development on coral health, a Coral Health Assessment Tool (CHAT) was developed using Microsoft Access ® and used to assess coral health in four bays in St. John. The tool builds on data management techniques that are currently employed by the National Park Service in St. John. The CHAT includes an Access form-based user interface that allows for random image selection and iterative analysis of still images that have been extracted from video of coral conditions. The database is dynamically linked to Microsoft Excel ® Pivot Table outputs that provide users with extensive data manipulation and exploration capabilities. The CHAT is constructed to allow extensibility and customization by developers and users. While this implementation of CHAT was specific to St. John, the tool's structure lends itself to further development and implementation in coral reef assessment programs worldwide. The health assessment employed a multi-parameter index, allowing bays to be ranked by relative coral health.

(cont.) This index combined multiple coral health factors, including percent cover, percent healthy, and others to create a single numerical score for each bay. Combined with the conclusions of other group members, results of the health assessment generally indicate that coral health is adversely affected by development.