Near Real-time Coral Reef Monitoring Using AI Based Environmental Information Synthesizer

To help mitigate the negative impacts of large scale dredging projects on coral reef benthic environments ecological conditions should be proactively monitored and analyzed in near real time to help inform adaptive management process when thresholds for possible coral bleaching, mortality, or other ecological events are reached. Our project uses near real time monitoring of turbidity, sediment deposition, light, ocean currents, wind, waves, temperature and salinity using in-situ moored buoy instrument packages and satellite observations. These are then integrated into a python based artificial intelligence (AI) tool EISES(Environmental Information Synthesizer for Expert Systems) that identifies possible environmental impacts to the coral community and outputs alerts to relevant managers detailing conditions and locations that are becoming conducive to those impacts so that managers can implement corrective actions to prevent irreversible impacts to corals. The goal of our project is to facilitate effective monitoring and adaptive management, in order to help mitigate the negative effects of human activity on coastal ecosystems.