Globally, coral reefs are experiencing increased stress caused by climate change-related factors (e.g., rising sea level and sea water temperatures, and ocean acidification). As recurrences of extreme…

This federal contract award, NNX17AH18A, is a Cooperative Agreement between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAER Institute), a non-profit research organization. The $184,743 contract is part of NASA's "Coral Bleaching Assessment through Remote Sensing and Integrated Citizen Science" (CORALBASICS) program, which aims to engage local communities in Puerto Rico to monitor coastal water quality and the status of coral reefs affected by climate change.

The project will train citizen scientists, such as dive shop owners and instructors, to collect benthic data on coral reef conditions, monitor coral bleaching events, and gather in-situ water quality measurements using smartphone applications. This community-based field data will complement NASA's remote sensing analysis of Landsat-8 and MODIS satellite imagery to assess water quality and validate the agency's coral reef monitoring capabilities. The contract does not have a set-aside designation, and BAER Institute has extensive experience supporting NASA and other federal agencies through prime contract awards and grants in areas like solar physics, planetary science, and Earth observation.

Globally, coral reefs are experiencing increased stress caused by climate change-related factors (e.g., rising sea level and sea water temperatures, and ocean acidification). As recurrences of extreme sea water thermal events, and the consequent potential for associated bleaching events, increase with climate change, the need for continuous monitoring of coral reefs become even more evident. Enabling properly trained members from the local communities (dive shop owners/instructors; citizen scientists hereafter) to actively participate in scientific programs/research projects, provides for such monitoring at little cost to the funding agencies once the citizens are properly trained and committed. Further, the possibility of obtaining high temporal resolution data with citizen scientists can provide for new venues to answer questions that may not be answered with traditional research approaches. The proposed project addresses the primary goal of the NASA s citizen science for earth systems program by engaging members of the local communities on the assessment of coastal water quality and the current and future status of puerto rico s coral reefs in an age of climate change and in particular, an increase in the frequency and magnitude of coral bleaching events. The project will complement remote sensing data with community-based field assessments strictly supervised by the PI s. The study will focus on training citizen scientists for the collection of benthic information related to the state of coral reefs using different methodologies, monitoring of coral bleaching events, and collecting of water quality data in situ and from a boat using a smartphone ocean color application. We will further use the data collected by citizen scientists to complement the validation of landsat-8 (OLI) and moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (modis) imagery for water quality assessment. At the same time, researchers from the university of puerto rico and the BAY area environmental research institute (baeri) will conduct field assessment of the biooptical properties of waters surrounding the proposed coral reef study areas. We will concentrate the prototype phase of the project on the southwest coast of PR, an area where the PI s have been collecting benthic and BIO-optical data for decades. Later, during the implementation phase we will add study sites on the north, west and northeast coasts of PR. Training for citizen scientists from these areas will also be provided during this implementation phase. In total, we expect to engage personnel from a minimum of 14 dive shops in data collection and training during both phases. As such, the proposed project will provide for technology and data transfer between the academia, researchers and local members of the community for a better assessment of environmental conditions affecting important coral reef areas in PR.