Abstract Summary
The Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative (HRI) is an international collaborative program, involving 73 coral reef-focused research, management and conservation organizations, that has developed and implemented a comprehensive framework for evaluating and improving large-scale reef health, through a science-based adaptive management process in the Mesoamerican Reef. Over the last decade, HRI and partners have produced five Report Cards that summarize reef health -which ranks measured values for: coral cover, macroalgal cover, herbivore and commercial fish biomass at over 300 sampling sites. The HRI/AGRRA database has been instrumental in establishing restoration sites and will help evaluate their efficacy. HRI and AGRRA work actively to promote sharing standardized monitoring data and promptly are launching the MAR Data Explorer. The explorer is helping us better understand large scales processes such as benthic community shifts, herbivory, disease dynamics, as well as structural components like coral species diversity and coral cover. In addition, these data provide important insights to help identify the best sites that have potentially resistant or resilient corals, in order to locate healthy donors colonies for restoration programs. The HRI is an active part of the steering committee of the Restoration Network for the Mesoamerican Reef, this network has been formed mainly to strengthen and advance reef restoration efforts in the region, utilizing a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach, following the approach that the HRI has had for the past years. A strategic action plan for 2019-2020 has been finalized with the main goals being to position the network as a regional advisory entity for marine ecosystem restoration, develop an outreach and communication platform and fundraise plan to make the network self-sufficient. The Network is also participating in implementing an insurance model for prioritized reefs in the MAR mainly focusing on hurricane damage. For the model sites are being prioritized based on: ecosystem data (HRI reef indicators), ecosystem services, exposure to hurricanes and environmental threats. Site prioritization is set to finalize in January 2019 and cost and risk assessments have begun.
