Field monitoring for determining the status and trends of coral reef ecosystems can utilise a plethora of methods and techniques. A comprehensive review of these methods is beyond the scope of this training course. However, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) provides a number of guidelines on the data capture process and many regional nodes provide standardised protocols for quantifying percent cover, mobile invertebrates and quantifying aspects of fish communities.
In the data training modules of this course, we will be providing an introduction to techniques for standardising and visualising data from field monitoring. So, it makes sense to present an overview of field monitoring standards from the GCRMN, approaches for data entry, templates and tools.
We also provide examples of workflows that will help transfer information from the field into digital data structures that can facilitate analysis and visualisation.
This module should take approximately ~20 minutes.