Systematic evidence mapping of the impact of water quality stressors on coral reef health
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EPA systematically mapped evidence available in the peer reviewed literature assessing the impact of water quality stressors on coral reef health. This project was conducted through EPA’s Office of Research and Development in conjunction with EPA’s Office of Water and co-developed based on feedback from the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force. The goal was to better understand, comprehensively, what is the current existing body of information relating water quality metrics to coral ecosystem health. This presentation describes the process of developing a systematic review and evidence synthesis of data available to assess how water quality stressors affect coral reef condition, in the context of pollution source management, climate interactions, non-water-quality stressors such as overfishing or cold ocean upwelling, and relationship to species-level and community-level endpoints. Results are shown and linked allowing stakeholders to interact with the final database through an online evidence dashboard and filter results for specific studies across eight different categories (such as water quality stressor, study type, biological endpoint, adverse effect).