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The
Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity Program (CARICOMP)
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The Caribbean
Coastal Marine Productivity (CARICOMP) program is
a cooperative effort at monitoring three productive Caribbean
coastal habitats, namely, mangroves, seagrasses and coral
reefs. Twenty-two marine
laboratories, parks and reserves in 14 islands and 8 mainland
countries have been collecting data since 1993 according
to prescribed methods given in the CARICOMP Methods Manual, Level I & II,
2001. Scientific monitoring of these ecosystems is performed
on a daily, weekly and twice-annual basis throughout the
region using the same monitoring protocols. |
The CCDC has developed a relational database in Microsoft
Access to store the dataset from CARICOMP. The datasets
include: Coral Transects, Urchin Transects, Gorgonian
Transects, Seagrass Growth, Biomass and Leaf Area, Mangroves
Forest Structure, Monthly Litterfall, Interstitial Water
Salinity, Seedling Productivity and Seedling Biomass,
Weekly Sea Water Temperature, Salinity, Light Attenuation
and Temperature using automated HoboTemp instruments,
Daily Maximum and Minimum Temperature and Rainfall.
In 1995-6 the Data Centre organized a Caribbean-wide survey
of coral bleaching and subsequent mortality and a seafan
sickness survey.
These data have been processed and formed the basis of papers
presented at the 8th and 9th International
Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) held in Panama in June 1996 and
in Bali, Indonesia in October, 2000 respectively. |
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