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The State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States: 2008
NOAA’s Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment, Biogeography Branch, with support from NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program, periodically compiles a comprehensive report describing the condition of shallow-water coral reef ecosystems in the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States. The report was called for by the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force in the U.S. National Action Plan to Conserve Coral Reefs as part of an effort to develop a comprehensive National Coral Reef Ecosystem Monitoring Program. Coral reef ecosystems, defined broadly as coral reefs and other functionally-related shallow water habitats, are found in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Navassa Island, Florida, the Flower Garden Banks and other banks of the NW Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, American Samoa, the Pacific Remote Island Areas, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, Guam, and the three nations comprising the Pacific Freely Associated States (the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau). This report is the third in a series of reports. The initial report, The State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States: 2002 (Turgeon et al., 2002), is similar to this report in that it incorporates the work of many scientists and managers from across the world. The first report provided a broad introduction to and a preliminary look at the status of coral reef ecosystems and was based primarily on qualitative information from the contributing authors. The 2005 report [Waddell, J.E. (ed.), 2005] and 2008 report [Waddell, J.E. and A.M. Clarke (eds.), 2008] differ from the 2002 report in that the more recent reports are based primarily on the most current quantitative monitoring data available, rather than qualitative assessments of ecosystem conditions. In addition, local writing teams, which were composed of experts from numerous research and management institutions, served as the primary authors of each jurisdiction chapter and thus were responsible for determining the content and scope of information included. As a result, the 2005 and 2008 reports have been published as edited volumes. Full Report available at http://ccma.nos.noaa.gov/ecosystems/coralreef/coral2008/pdf/CoralReport2008.pdf
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