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Thursday, April 8, 2021. 4:00 PM. Webinar: Towards Predicting the Fate of Reef Corals.
Anderson Mayfield, NOAA/University of Miami Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric
Science. Sponsored by Coral Collaboration Webinar Series - NOAA Coral Reef
Conservation Program. More information here.

Corals reefs are threatened the world over by the rapidly rising temperatures associated with
global climate change (GCC), as well as other insults of predominantly anthropogenic origin. In
this presentation, I will first summarize work myself and my colleagues have been undertaking
in recent years that address 1) charting and characterizing previously unstudied reefs (so that
we know exactly what stands to be lost) and 2) the physiological implications of GCC on coral
health. Then, I will discuss how I have been using the data from such field and laboratory
studies, respectively, to develop artificial intelligence-driven models that enable us to identify
resilient coral colonies (refugia). Although it may be too late to save many reefs, this novel
capacity will allow us to enact coral reef triage, in which coral colonies and their respective
habitats are scored along a physiological resilience spectrum (from highly stress susceptible to
markedly resilient).