The integrated coral observing network: Sensor solutions for sensitive sites

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON), has been operational since 2000 and works closely with most US Government and many international environmental partners involved in coral reef research. The ICON program has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence techniques to assess near real-time data streams from environment sensor networks such as the SEAKEYS Network (Florida Keys), the Australia Institute of Marine Science Weather Network, NOAA's Coral Reef Ecosystem Division network in the Pacific, and its own Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) of stations in the Caribbean. Besides its innovative approach to coral monitoring station deployments, the ICON program recently pioneered techniques for the near real-time integration of satellite, in situ and radar data sources for purposes of ecological forecasting of such events as coral bleaching, coral spawning, upwelling and other marine behavioral or physical oceanographic events. The ICON program has also ushered in the use of Pulse-Amplitude-Modulating fluorometry to measure near real-time physiological recording of response to environmental stress during coral bleaching, thus providing even better ecological forecasting capabilities through artificial intelligence and data integrative techniques. Herewith, we describe these techniques, along with a report on new coral calcification instrumentation augmenting the ICON Network sensor array.