Coral Reef Monitoring for Climate Change Impacts: Jamaica 2000-2003

Marcia Ford1

1 Caribbean Coastal Data Centre, UWI-Centre for Marine Sciences, Mona Campus, KGN7, Kingston, Jamaica

Corresponding author(s): Marcia Ford (marcia.creary@uwimona.edu.jm)

Received {date}; Revised {date}; Accepted {date}; Published {date}

Citation: Combination of authors, year of data paper publication (in parentheses), Title, Journal Name, Volume, Issue number (in parentheses), and doi of the data paper.

Resource Citation

Ford M (2019): Coral Reef Monitoring for Climate Change Impacts: Jamaica 2000-2003. v1.3. Caribbean Coastal Data Centre, Centre for Marine Sciences. Dataset/Samplingevent. https://cloud.gbif.org/bid/resource?r=cpacc_corals&v=1.3

Abstract

The Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Global Climate Change (CPACC) project was established in 1998 by CARICOM countries in response to the growing concerns regarding the impact of global climate change in the region.  Component 5 of the CPACC project, Coral Reef Monitoring for Climate Change Impacts, was designed to establish a long term monitoring programme in the region. Under CPACC, the University of the West Indies - Centre for Marine Sciences provided technical assistance in the execution of the coral reef monitoring programme in three pilot countries (The Bahamas, Belize and Jamaica). Jamaica continued monitoring beyond the pilot year (2000) and these datasets represent the results of the coral reef monitoring conducted in Jamaica for the period 2000-2003.

Keywords: Samplingevent, Coral reef Monitoring, climate change, Jamaica, Discovery Bay, Port Royal, Pellew Island

Project details

Project title: Component 5 - Coral Reef Monitoring for Climate Change Impacts.  Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Global Climate Change Project
Personnel: Marcia Ford, Ivanna Kenny, Leslie Walling, Loureene Jones
Funding: CARICOM Secretariat - Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Climate Change Project & the Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change Project.  Support also provided by the national Environment and Planning Agency and the University of the West-Centre for Marine Sciences.
Study area descriptions/descriptor: The three Operational Areas that were selected for monitoring were Eastern Portland (minimally impacted), Discovery Bay in St Ann (mildly impacted) and Port Royal Cays in Kingston (severely impacted).  For this monitoring programme “impact” is defined as land-based, anthropogenic stress, transported to reefs by fluvial inputs or actual physical impacts on reefs caused by activities within the marine environment. The target habitat selected was the mixed zone on the windward slopes, consisting mainly of spur and groove formations, dominated by Montastraea annularis within a depth range of 7-13 m.
Design description: The National Environment and Planning Agency, NEPA (formally the Natural Resources Conservation Authority, NRCA) conducted the field monitoring for the period 2000 – 2003 as part of their regular work programme.  The three Operational Areas that were selected for monitoring were Eastern Portland (minimally impacted), Discovery Bay in St Ann (mildly impacted) and Port Royal Cays in Kingston (severely impacted).  The target habitat selected was the mixed zone on the windward slopes, consisting mainly of spur and groove formations, dominated by Montastraea annularis within a depth range of 7-13 m.  Twenty transects, each 20 m in length were located randomly within the target habitat, parallel to the depth contour, and monitored using the CPACC Video Monitoring Protocol. The resultant videotapes were catalogued and using the specialized software - Pinnacle Studio 9 TM - adjacent non-overlapping images were captured, dotted and stored as image files. The benthic components under the random dots were identified based on specified benthic category codes and the resultant data points were summarized and stored in spreadsheets.

Data published through GBIF: https://cloud.gbif.org/bid/resource?r=cpacc_corals

Spatial coverage

General spatial coverage: The three Operational Areas that were selected for monitoring in Jamaica were Eastern Portland (minimally impacted), Discovery Bay in St Ann (mildly impacted) and Port Royal Cays in Kingston (severely impacted).
Coordinates: 17°46'12''N and 18°38'45.6''N Latitude; 78°27'50.4''W and 76°8'6''W Longitude 

Temporal coverage: 2000 - 2003

Methods

Method step description: 
- . 	Site selection was based on the following document:  
Woodley. J. (1999) Component 5: Coral Reef Monitoring Site Selection Protocol (Draft). CPACC. (Available at the UWI-Centre for Marine Sciences)
- . 	Video monitoring was carried out based on the methods outlined in the following document:
Miller, J. (2000) Using Videotape to Sample Coral Reefs.  US Geological Survey. Biological Resources Division. Virgin Islands Field Station. St. John, USVI. (Available at the UWI-Centre for Marine Sciences)
Study extent description: The Site Selection Protocol stipulated that at least three areas should be monitored in each of the pilot countries and these should be representative of pristine, mildly impacted and severely-impacted conditions.  In this instance, impact was defined as land-based, anthropogenic impacts, transported to reefs by fluvial inputs or actual physical impacts on reefs caused by activities within the marine environment.

The "pristine" location extended along the relatively undisturbed coastline, containing numerous fringing coral reefs. The monitoring area was located approximately 10 km east of Port Antonio, in the parish of Portland and situated away from any major land-based influences, and extending due north of Monkey Island and eastwards to the Blue Hole area following the 7 – 13 meter depth contour. 

The monitoring site, located to the west of Discovery Bay at “Gorgo City” reef was selected as the mildly impacted location.  Activities within this area included a port exporting bauxite as well as fishing, tourism, research and teaching. The monitoring site has a gentle profile between the depths of 7-13 meters

The Port Royal site represented the heavily impacted site, being close to a major city and also being down current of several major rivers.  The specific monitoring site is located within the Port Royal Cays, which is a collection of eight small coral islets (Gun Cay, Rackhams Cay, Lime Cay, Drunkenman’s Cay, East Middle Ground, South Cay, Southeast Cay and Maiden Cay) situated on the island shelf of the south coast of Jamaica.  The Port Royal Cays are an important nearshore fishery site for the artisanal fishing industry serving the nearby fishing communities.
Sampling description: The benthic cover of the coral reefs was monitored using underwater videography. The divers used a high-resolution digital video camera fitted with a wide-angle lens and underwater housing.  The diver videotaped while swimming slowing along the transect holding the camera perpendicular to the substratum at a height of 40 cm (guided by a 40 cm wand attached to the camera housing) in order to provide a belt transect that was approximately 40 cm wide . A total of 20 transects each 20 m in length were monitored at each location.

The resultant videotapes were viewed to ensure that clarity and resolution were satisfactory, after which the tapes were numbered and catalogued and the content of each tape logged  to ensure that the individual transects at each site could be located at a later date with relative ease. A computer was connected to a videotape player and the tape played to “capture” adjacent, non-overlapping images (photo quadrats) which where converted to photo files and saved in an image library.  Ten random dots were placed on each image during a process that uses Microsoft Excel and Adobe Photoshop and was automated by WinBatch for Windows (a batch processing program).  After the image has been processed, the data analyst identified the benthic components under the random dots while viewing the images in Adobe Photoshop.  Data points were identified to species (where possible) or to higher functional taxonomic groups.  Other substrate categories included the hard substrate (sand, rubble, pavement etc), points falling on equipment (e.g. tape, wand etc) and areas that could not be identified (shadow and unknown). These data were entered into data sheets developed in Microsoft Excel, which automatically tabulated and grouped the substrate categories and calculated the percentage cover and standard deviation.
Quality control description: Video taping was carried out by trained and experienced divers.  Data analysis was undertaken by marine biologist trained in the identification of marine benthic species.

Datasets

Dataset description
Object name: Darwin Core Archive Coral Reef Monitoring for Climate Change Impacts: Jamaica 2000-2003
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://cloud.gbif.org/bid/archive.do?r=cpacc_corals
Publication date of data: 2019-04-16
Language: English
Licences of use: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License

Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 2019-01-14
Hierarchy level: Dataset