Abstract Summary
With the proliferation of local and regional coral propagation and reef restoration programs around the world, there is an increasing need to develop uniform, consistent guidelines to ascertain the status of these efforts that are initiated with differing levels of expertise and a wide range of programmatic goals (e.g., restoration, education, enhanced livelihoods). Here, we will describe a simple assessment tool based on the stop-light indicator framework that captures status information of a wide range of potential project components and goals, including key steps such as coral collection, nursery deployment and maintenance, coral monitoring, stakeholder involvement, funding sources, data sharing, education and outreach, and project sustainability. The scores obtained for the different desired program attributes are combined into a single score that can be easily tracked among projects and over time to see the status and progress of the restoration activities. The assessment tool proposed is tested using data from seven restoration projects from the Dominican Republic, highlighting strengths and shortcomings of each project as well as identifying steps that can be taken to improve project status. This tool was expanded by Schopmeyer et al. (2018) to evaluate the status of regional, multi-species restoration programs. Results from this regional perspective will be detailed in a separate presentation.
