Data Visualization Tool for Monitoring Coral Reefs in American Samoa

To gauge the status and trends of coral reef ecosystems, federal and local agencies in American Samoa conduct monitoring programs that assess benthic cover, reef fish populations, and environmental conditions such as temperature and water quality. However, these coral reef monitoring programs vary in terms of survey areas, methodologies, and time scales. To address this challenge, there is a pressing need to collate, integrate, and synthesize decades of monitoring data from American Samoa’s coral reefs. Here, we introduce a data visualization tool that can be used by scientists, resource managers, and community members to make informed decisions about their resources. The future of coral monitoring is advancing with new technologies, such as artificial intelligence to automate photo image analysis and structure-from-motion techniques to develop three-dimensional imagery of coral reefs, enabling the tracking of individual corals and their growth over time. Data from these emerging technologies could be incorporated into the data visualization tool, further enhancing its usefulness.

Verstaen, J., Smith, J., & Samson, J. (2025). Data visualization tool for monitoring coral reefs in American Samoa. The Journal of Ocean Technology, 20(2), 40–49. doi.org/10.48336/zwa4-kg31