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Indicators of Reef Health and Social Well-being
Measuring Reef Health is more complex than visiting your family physician for an annual checkup. Scientists are only now beginning to develop quantitative inductors to evaluate reef health. This report card is one of the first such attempts for a diverse reef ecosystem. We have selected 7 key ‘indicators’ that have sufficient data coverage and the ability to help detect differences among reef sites. The objective is to use an optimum amount (6-10) of indicators to measure reef health. We have combined three coral focused indicators into a Coral Index and four other indicators into the Reef Biota index. The two sub-indices are then averaged to attain the overall Integrated Reef Health Index (IRHI), which serves as the ultimate measure of reef health. |
