Creating a toolkit for assessment and mitigation of agricultural operations to benefit coral reefs

This project seeks to fill two critical gaps in understanding that prevent managers from prioritizing and evaluating the success of Environmental Quality Incentives Program investments to coral reefs in real time. The first gap is providing a standardized methodology toolkit across island jurisdictions to evaluate the source of sediments and nutrients that are impacting reefs downstream and the relative inputs coming from agricultural operations to other land-based sources of pollution. The second gap is using newly available technologies in genetic markers in corals to test the impact of reducing stressors from agricultural operations to coral reefs in real time.