[Coral-List] Webinar: Towards data-driven action for coral reef conservation and policy

[Kitty Currier]

This Thursday, the UCSB Center for Spatial Studies will host Dr. Emily
Darling of the Wildlife Conservation Society for a webinar:

Towards data-driven action for coral reef conservation and policy

21 April, 9-10 am PDT
https://www.airmeet.com/e/53d15260-bc2d-11ec-a9ae-a77c1acd23e4

Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate
globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic
conservation and management requires identifying the environmental and
socioeconomic factors that underscore the persistence of coral reef
ecosystems facing local pressures and global climate change. I will
discuss several ‘big data’ approaches to developing global coral reef
spatial datasets that can reveal large-scale ecological patterns and
drivers to guide urgent management efforts for coral reefs. Our
approach is to combine spatial datasets with underwater field surveys
to identify key threats, test and build new models, and use
data-driven insights to advocate for strategic policy priorities to
sustain Indo-Pacific coral reefs and avoid ecosystem collapse.

Dr. Emily Darling is the Director of Coral Reef Conservation at the
Wildlife Conservation Society where she leads a global coral reef
conservation connecting conservation impact across the Western Indian
Ocean, Coral Triangle, Melanesia and the Caribbean. She is a
co-founder of the innovative coral reef monitoring platform MERMAID,
and in her spare time is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.

This webinar is part of a series on spatial analysis and technology
across disciplines, hosted by the Center for Spatial Studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. All are welcome to attend.

Thanks,
Kitty

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Kitty Currier
kcurrier at ucsb.edu
Postdoctoral Scholar
Center for Spatial Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara