Coral Reef Ecosystem Monitoring Report For America Samoa 2002 2006 PDF Download

"In 2005 the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources (DMWR) initiated a comprehensive long-term monitoring program for the reefs in American Samoa, the American Samoa Coral Reef Monitoring Program (ASCRMP). Funding was provided through the Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Ocean Services (NOS). Although there have been previous monitoring surveys in American Samoa covering a variety of spatial and temporal scales, the ASCRMP represents the first attempt to annually monitor representative reefs in American Samoa, starting initially around Tutuila and eventually in the Manu'a islands and the two atolls, Rose and Swains. The program has been set up with long-term government funding, and is therefore capable of accumulating long-term data sets annually over a larger geographic scale. The primary objectives of the American Samoa Coral Reef Monitoring Program are to: (1) Monitor the status and trends in the distribution and abundance of reef biota on reefs in American Samoa, and (2) Provide environmental managers, as well as other decision makers, with information that is pertinent to managing coral reefs in the territory. As a monitoring program, ASCRMP's goal is to document change - i.e. where, how much, and what kind of changes take place at the various monitoring sites. The ideal is to resolve change at scales which will allow judgments to be made as to which changes are within normal, natural variability, and which are outside it"--Page 2.