Coral Favorability: Managed Conditions - Guam

Managers have some ability to support healthy environmental conditions through strategic action at a local and regional scale, such as water quality. This layer synthesized spatial information for several managed conditions to create a relative score for how favorable a given location is for coral growth and survival.

Environmental conditions contributing to this layer included: chlorophyll-a concentration, fish and herbivore biomass, turbidity (Kd490), macroalgal cover, and ocean-based pollution. Covariation in these conditions was accounted for using principal component analysis (PCA) to form composite variables of conditions that have strong relationships with one another. The resulting principal components were averaged and scaled from 0 (worst) to 1 (best) to produce a coral favorability score for managed conditions. These data are provided for the island of Guam as a raster with a resolution of 1500 m.