Predicted Coral Cover of Montipora patula in the Hawaiian Islands

Output from a model to predict the benthic cover of Montipora patula in the Hawaiian Islands as a proportion (0-1.0). Coral cover was modeled with boosted regression trees (BRT) in R software using data from coral cover surveys and environmental covariates derived from models and/or observations including wave height, benthic geomorphology, and downwelled irradiance. The best performing BRT model was used to predict M. patula cover for the entire geographic study domain. Data and model output represent conditions for shallow coral reefs in the Hawaiian Islands from 0 m to -30 m depth over the time period 2000-2009. Further details on methodology and results are contained in Franklin et al. (2013).