{"665655":{"#nid":"665655","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Machine Learning Predicts Biodiversity and Resilience in the Coral Triangle","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ECoral reef conservation is a steppingstone to protect marine biodiversity and life in the ocean as we know it. The health of coral also has huge societal implications: reef ecosystems provide sustenance and livelihoods for millions of people around the world. Conserving biodiversity in reef areas is both a social issue and a marine biodiversity priority.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EIn the face of climate change, \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eas.gatech.edu\/people\/bracco-dr-annalisa\u0022\u003EAnnalisa Bracco\u003C\/a\u003E, professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eas.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences\u003C\/a\u003E at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Lyuba Novi, a postdoctoral researcher, offer a new methodology that could revolutionize how conservationists monitor coral. The researchers applied machine learning tools to study how climate impacts connectivity and biodiversity in the Pacific Ocean\u2019s Coral Triangle \u2014 the most diverse and biologically complex marine ecosystem on the planet. \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s42003-022-04330-8\u0022\u003ETheir research\u003C\/a\u003E, recently published in \u003Cem\u003ENature Communications Biology\u003C\/em\u003E, overcomes time and resource barriers to contextualize the biodiversity of the Coral Triangle, while offering hope for better monitoring and protection in the future.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe saw that the biodiversity of the Coral Triangle is incredibly dynamic,\u201d Bracco said. \u201cFor a long time, it has been postulated that this is due to sea level change and distribution of land masses, but we are now starting to understand that there is more to the story.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EConnectivity refers to the conditions that allow different ecosystems to exchange genetic material such as eggs, larvae, or the young. Ocean currents spread genetic material and also create the dynamics that allow a body of water \u2014 and thus ecosystems \u2014 to maintain consistent chemical, biological, and physical properties. If coral larvae are spread to an ecoregion where the conditions are very similar to the original location, the larvae can start a new coral.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBracco wanted to see how climate, and specifically the El Ni\u00f1o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in its phases \u2014 El Ni\u00f1o, La Ni\u00f1a, and neutral conditions \u2014 impacts connectivity in the Coral Triangle. Climate events that move large masses of warm water in the Pacific Ocean bring enormous changes and have been known to exacerbate coral bleaching, in which corals turn white due to environmental stressors and become vulnerable to disease.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cBiologists collect data \u003Cem\u003Ein situ\u003C\/em\u003E, which is extremely important,\u201d Bracco said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not possible to monitor enormous regions \u003Cem\u003Ein situ\u003C\/em\u003E for many years \u2014 that would require a constant presence of scuba divers. So, figuring out how different ocean regions and large marine ecosystems are connected over time, especially in terms of foundational species, becomes important.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMachine Learning for Discovering Connectivity\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EYears ago, Bracco and collaborators developed a tool, Delta Maps, that uses machine learning to identify \u201cdomains,\u201d or regions within any kind of system that share the same dynamic. Bracco initially used it to analyze domains of climate variability in models but also suspected it could be used to study ecoregions in the ocean.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EFor this study, they used the tool to map out domains of connectivity in the Coral Triangle using 30 years of sea surface temperature data. Sea surface temperatures change in response to ocean currents over scales of weeks and months and across distances of tens of kilometers. These changes are relevant to coral connectivity, so the researchers built their machine learning tool based on this observation, using changes in surface ocean temperature to identify regions connected by currents.\u0026nbsp;They also separated the time periods that they were considering into three categories: El Ni\u00f1o events, La Ni\u00f1a events, and neutral or \u201cnormal\u201d times, painting a picture of how connectivity was impacted during major climate events in particular ecoregions.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ENovi then applied a ranking system to the different ecoregions they identified. She used rank page centrality, a machine learning tool that was invented to rank webpages on the internet, on top of Delta Maps to identify which coral ecoregions were most strongly connected and able to receive the most coral larvae from other regions. Those regions would be the ones most likely sustain and survive through a bleaching event.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EClimate Dynamics and Biodiversity\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBracco and Novi found that climate dynamics have contributed to biodiversity because of the way climate introduces variability to the currents in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The researchers realized that alternation of El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a events has allowed for enormous genetic exchanges between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and enabled the ecosystems to survive through a variety of different climate situations.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThere is never an identical connection between ecoregions in all ENSO phases,\u201d Bracco said. \u201cIn other parts of the world ocean, coral reefs are connected through a fixed, often small, number of ecoregions, and if you eliminate this fixed number of connections by bleaching all connected reefs, you will not be able to rebuild the corals in any of them. But in the Pacific the connections are changing all the time and are so dynamic that soon enough the bleached reef will receive larvae from completely different ecoregions in a different ENSO phase.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThey also concluded that, because of the Coral Triangle\u2019s dynamic climate component, there is more possibility for rebuilding biodiversity there than anywhere else on the planet. And that the evolution of biodiversity in the Coral Triangle is not only linked to landmasses or sea levels but also to the evolution of ENSO through geological times. The researchers found that though ENSO causes coral bleaching, it has helped the Coral Triangle become so rich in biodiversity.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBetter Monitoring Opportunities\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBecause coral reef survival has been designated a priority by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Bracco and Novi\u2019s research is poised to have broad applications. The researchers\u2019 method identified which ecoregions conservationists should try hardest to protect and also the regions that conservationists could expect to have the most luck with protection measures. Their methodology can also help to identify which regions should be monitored more and the ones that could be considered lower priority for now due to the ways they are currently thriving.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis research opens a lot of possibilities for better monitoring strategies, and especially how to monitor given a limited amount of resources and money,\u201d Bracco said. \u201cAs of now, coral monitoring often happens when groups have a limited amount of funding to apply to a very specific localized region. We hope our method can be used to create a better monitoring over larger scales of time and space.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ECITATION: Novi, L., Bracco, A. \u201cMachine learning prediction of connectivity, biodiversity and resilience in the Coral Triangle.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003Cem\u003ECommun Biol\u003C\/em\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003E5\u003C\/strong\u003E, 1359 (2022).\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EDOI: \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s42003-022-04330-8\u0022\u003Ehttps:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s42003-022-04330-8\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn the face of climate change, Annalisa Bracco, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Lyuba Novi, a postdoctoral researcher, offer a new methodology that could revolutionize how conservationists monitor coral.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The team\u0027s new methodology offers hope for better coral connectivity monitoring and protection in the future. "}],"uid":"36123","created_gmt":"2023-02-09 16:34:44","changed_gmt":"2024-01-03 17:15:46","author":"Catherine Barzler","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2023-02-09T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2023-02-09T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"665649":{"id":"665649","type":"image","title":"A school of planktivorous fish sheltering around\u00a0a coral on a reef in the Solomon Islands in the Coral Triangle. Photo by Mark Hay ","body":null,"created":"1675957244","gmt_created":"2023-02-09 15:40:44","changed":"1675971703","gmt_changed":"2023-02-09 19:41:43","alt":"A school of small orange planktivorous fish swim around coral in the ocean.","file":{"fid":"251739","name":"DSC00769.JPG","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/DSC00769.JPG","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/DSC00769.JPG","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":793152,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/DSC00769.JPG?itok=-8R-SvsG"}}},"media_ids":["665649"],"groups":[{"id":"1278","name":"College of Sciences"},{"id":"364801","name":"EAS"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"192254","name":"cos-climate"},{"id":"192258","name":"cos-data"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"},{"id":"192863","name":"go-ai"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"},{"id":"39431","name":"Data Engineering and Science"},{"id":"39541","name":"Systems"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71911","name":"Earth and Environment"},{"id":"71881","name":"Science and Technology"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ECatherine Barzler, Senior Research Writer\/Editor\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["catherine.barzler@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}