Greene Austin

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Greene
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Austin
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  • Article
    Toward a new era of coral reef monitoring
    (American Chemical Society, 2023-03-17) Apprill, Amy ; Girdhar, Yogesh ; Mooney, T. Aran ; Hansel, Colleen M. ; Long, Matthew H. ; Liu, Yaqin ; Zhang, W. Gordon ; Kapit, Jason ; Hughen, Konrad ; Coogan, Jeff ; Greene, Austin
    Coral reefs host some of the highest concentrations of biodiversity and economic value in the oceans, yet these ecosystems are under threat due to climate change and other human impacts. Reef monitoring is routinely used to help prioritize reefs for conservation and evaluate the success of intervention efforts. Reef status and health are most frequently characterized using diver-based surveys, but the inherent limitations of these methods mean there is a growing need for advanced, standardized, and automated reef techniques that capture the complex nature of the ecosystem. Here we draw on experiences from our own interdisciplinary research programs to describe advances in in situ diver-based and autonomous reef monitoring. We present our vision for integrating interdisciplinary measurements for select “case-study” reefs worldwide and for learning patterns within the biological, physical, and chemical reef components and their interactions. Ultimately, these efforts could support the development of a scalable and standardized suite of sensors that capture and relay key data to assist in categorizing reef health. This framework has the potential to provide stakeholders with the information necessary to assess reef health during an unprecedented time of reef change as well as restoration and intervention activities.
  • Article
    Spatial extent of dysbiosis in the branching coral Pocillopora damicornis during an acute disease outbreak
    (Nature Research, 2023-10-02) Greene, Austin ; Moriarty, Tess ; Leggatt, William ; Ainsworth, Tracy D. ; Donahue, Megan J. ; Raymundo, Laurie J
    Globally, coral reefs face increasing disease prevalence and large-scale outbreak events. These outbreaks offer insights into microbial and functional patterns of coral disease, including early indicators of disease that may be present in visually-healthy tissues. Outbreak events also allow investigation of how reef-building corals, typically colonial organisms, respond to disease. We studied Pocillopora damicornis during an acute tissue loss disease outbreak on Guam to determine whether dysbiosis was present in visually-healthy tissues ahead of advancing disease lesions. These data reveal that coral fragments with visual evidence of disease are expectedly dysbiotic with high microbial and metabolomic variability. However, visually-healthy tissues from the same colonies lacked dysbiosis, suggesting disease containment near the affected area. These results challenge the idea of using broad dysbiosis as a pre-visual disease indicator and prompt reevaluation of disease assessment in colonial organisms such as reef-building corals.
  • Article
    Multi‐factor coral disease risk: a new product for early warning and management
    (Ecological Society of America, 2024-03-24) Caldwell, Jamie M. ; Liu, Gang ; Geiger, Erick ; Heron, Scott F. ; Eakin, C. Mark ; De La Cour, Jacqueline ; Greene, Austin ; Raymundo, Laurie J. ; Dryden, Jen ; Schlaff, Audrey ; Stella, Jessica S. ; Kindinger, Tye L. ; Couch, Courtney S. ; Fenner, Douglas ; Hoot, Whitney ; Manzello, Derek P. ; Donahue, Megan J.
    Ecological forecasts are becoming increasingly valuable tools for conservation and management. However, there are few examples of near-real-time forecasting systems that account for the wide range of ecological complexities. We developed a new coral disease ecological forecasting system that explores a suite of ecological relationships and their uncertainty and investigates how forecast skill changes with shorter lead times. The Multi-Factor Coral Disease Risk product introduced here uses a combination of ecological and marine environmental conditions to predict the risk of white syndromes and growth anomalies across reefs in the central and western Pacific and along the east coast of Australia and is available through the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coral Reef Watch program. This product produces weekly forecasts for a moving window of 6 months at a resolution of ~5 km based on quantile regression forests. The forecasts show superior skill at predicting disease risk on withheld survey data from 2012 to 2020 compared with predecessor forecast systems, with the biggest improvements shown for predicting disease risk at mid- to high-disease levels. Most of the prediction uncertainty arises from model uncertainty, so prediction accuracy and precision do not improve substantially with shorter lead times. This result arises because many predictor variables cannot be accurately forecasted, which is a common challenge across ecosystems. Weekly forecasts and scenarios can be explored through an online decision support tool and data explorer, co-developed with end-user groups to improve use and understanding of ecological forecasts. The models provide near-real-time disease risk assessments and allow users to refine predictions and assess intervention scenarios. This work advances the field of ecological forecasting with real-world complexities and, in doing so, better supports near-term decision making for coral reef ecosystem managers and stakeholders. Secondarily, we identify clear needs and provide recommendations to further enhance our ability to forecast coral disease risk.