Abstract Summary
Healthy coral reefs provide coastal protection and natural defenses against climatic extremes. Coral reefs provide up to $30 billion to the global economy, with $9 billion made up by the coastal protection benefits they afford. Recent numerical modelling studies have shown that reefs can reduce wave energy by 97% and wave height by 84%, limiting physical impacts to the shoreline and reducing flooding. However, as reefs decline due to disease, pollution, increased ocean temperature, and acidification, coral propagation and reef restoration have become common intervention tools to mitigate impacts and recover lost services. As restoration efforts have now expanded to ecologically meaningful scales, it is important to ascertain whether restored reefs can offer meaningful coastal protection. In this project, we validate large-scale hydrodynamic models using experiments conducted at the University of Miami’s SUSTAIN wave tank using realistic coral models and provide field validation tests using floating wave sensors deployed over healthy and degraded Florida reefs. Through these experiments, we address scale and data gaps and potential parameters of importance, such as reef height, coral density, coral community structure, and coral spatial arrangement, which may influence wave height and energy. The information gathered will help guide future reef restoration efforts aimed at providing coastal protection benefits an enhancing coastal resilience.
