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Data for: Long-term ecological monitoring guides spatial prioritisation of coral reef restoration following an extreme marine heatwave - data and code
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Data for: Long-term ecological monitoring guides spatial prioritisation of coral reef restoration following an extreme marine heatwave - data and code

Damian Thomson, George Roff, Marine Gouezo, Melanie Orr, Christopher Doropoulos, Anna Cresswell, Russ Babcock, Daphne Oh and Lauren Hardiman
CSIRO
20/08/2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25919/0cm3-pf65
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Science and Engineering Publications
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Long-term ecological monitoring guides spatial prioritisation of coral reef restoration following an extreme marine heatwave - data and codeView
Open CC BY-NC V4.0

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Abstract

coral reef restoration marine heatwave ecological resilience restoration prioritisation long-term ecological monitoring decision-support framework Ningaloo Reef
Climate-driven ecosystem degradation occurs at spatial scales far exceeding the capacity of direct restoration, creating an urgent need for frameworks that identify where intervention can maximise ecological benefit. We developed a restoration prioritisation framework integrating long-term ecological monitoring, habitat-specific reference conditions, and hierarchical Bayesian modelling to quantify historical resilience and post-disturbance need. We applied the framework following the extreme 2025 marine heatwave at northern Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. We analysed 18 years of monitoring data (2007–2025), comprising 579 transects across 148 sites, four reef regions and four geomorphic habitats. Historical coral-cover trajectories at 83 sites were used to quantify resistance and recovery, integrated into a Historical Resilience Index (HRI). HRI was combined with post-heatwave restoration need, measured as the departure of 2025 coral cover from habitat-specific historical reference conditions, to identify restoration priorities. Historical resilience varied markedly among sites and habitats, while heatwave-driven coral mortality resulted in 52 of 83 sites (63%) being classified as the highest priority, “Restore Now”. Despite high historical resilience, 37 of 41 reef-slope sites were classified as Restore Now because of severe coral loss. In contrast, shallow reef flats exhibited lower and more variable historical resilience but were less frequently prioritised for restoration. This revealed a mismatch between ecological priority and operational feasibility, with many high-priority sites occurring in deeper, high-energy reef-slope habitats that are challenging and costly to restore. The HRI framework provides a transferable approach for targeting restoration using long-term monitoring data and adaptively updating priorities as disturbance regimes change.

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