A Manager's Guide to Coral Reef Restoration Planning and Design.
There is a growing consensus that comprehensive conservation strategies for coral reef ecosystems - like those for many terrestrial ecosystems - must incorporate restoration to address coral loss. A Manager’s Guide to Coral Reef Restoration Planning and Design (hereafter ‘Guide’) meets this need by providing a systematic planning process that assists managers in setting and meeting their restoration goals. Using available information about the specific reefs in their locations, practitioners are guided through critical decisions about if, where, and how restoration may be conducted. The Guide describes a six-step cycle for planning and implementing restoration interventions through a climate-smart lens. It focuses on the first four steps of the cycle, which cover planning and design of restoration interventions to increase the likelihood of success and support learning throughout the implementation process. Use of the Guide culminates in the achievement of a Restoration Action Plan, which is then used for the active implementation phase of restoration, in which the action plan is used along with other logistical planning to actively deploy and track restoration in the field.