September 2, 2002

Research expedition to assess coral reefs in Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

By Tim Stephens

Three UCSC scientists are taking part in a multi-agency research expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands this month, evaluating some of the most isolated and pristine coral reef habitats in the world.

Daria Siciliano, shown here with a large table coral (Acropora cytherea), is mapping coral reef habitats in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as part of the NOWRAMP project. Photo: Jim Maragos, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

During the expedition, from September 8 through October 8, a web site hosted by the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii Department of Education will feature daily ship logs, journal entries, interviews with scientists, photos, videos, and educational activities for teachers and schoolchildren.

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (NOWRAMP) began in 2000 with the aim of rapidly evaluating and mapping the shallow-water reef habitats in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Donald Potts, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, was a coprincipal investigator on the 2000 and 2001 NOWRAMP expeditions. Joining Potts on the 2002 expedition are Daria Siciliano, a Ph.D. student in ocean sciences who also participated in the previous two expeditions, and Marjo Vierros, a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Marine Sciences.

NOWRAMP is a collaborative project involving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and the University of Hawaii. Randall Kosaki, coral reef research coordinator for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and Rusty Brainard from the National Marine Fisheries Service, Honolulu Laboratory, are the principal investigators on the two research vessels in this year's NOWRAMP expedition.

"This is the first program of this magnitude to be undertaken at any coral reef system," Potts said. "There is an urgent need for this kind of assessment, because we have many reasons to believe that coral reefs and other shallow-water tropical environments are the habitats most profoundly affected already by global climatic changes and by local human impacts."

The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are a string of volcanic islands, coral atolls, submerged banks, and seamounts that are part of the State of Hawaii. They include nearly 70 percent of all coral reef areas under U.S. jurisdiction. This biologically rich area is home to more than 7,000 known species, including marine mammals, fish, sea turtles, birds, and invertebrates. Many of these species are rare or endangered, and at least one quarter are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth.

Due to their isolation, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are one of the few places in the world where there are almost no local human impacts, Potts said.
"They are effectivly uninhabited, and as close as we can get to a pristine coral reef ecosystem. This means they are one of the few places where we can look at the effects of global changes in the climate and the oceans, without having those effects confounded by local factors," he said.

Potts will be conducting coral biodiversity surveys--identifying corals, mapping their distributions, and collecting material for taxonomic study and genetic analysis. He said he expects his surveys to turn up known species not previously recorded in the area, as well as new species previously unknown to scientists.

Siciliano will continue her work on mapping the coral reef habitats as part of her Ph.D. project. This work includes using images of the area obtained by remote sensing instruments carried on satellites and airplanes (see earlier Currents story).

Analyzing the images requires "groundtruthing," which involves surveying the habitats on the ground and matching the survey data with the image data. Siciliano will also be taking core samples from corals, which will be analyzed to assess growth rates and environmental changes over the past 50 years or so.

Vierros, who earned a B.A. in biology at UCSC in 1990, is back at the campus while on leave from her position at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. She will be conducting a "marine gap analysis" of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands ecosystem. Vierros and Siciliano will be analyzing all available data to identify sites that are crucial for conservation of the area's biodiversity.

They are using a computer program based on geographic information systems (GIS) technology to integrate data from a wide range of sources. The program identifies networks of sites that collectively capture examples of all native communities and species. These sites can be evaluated in light of current management practices, and the results can help scientists design the most effective strategies for managing and monitoring the coral reef habitats.

A broad range of other investigations will be carried out by scientists on the expedition's two research vessels. The participants include specialists in marine fish, invertebrates, and algae. Potts said the multidisciplinary, integrative approach of this investigation is the way of the future.

"To address complex problems like environmental change, we have to move out of our specializations and work more and more on joint programs with people in different disciplines," he said.

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