Coral reef baselines survey: what do we think is natural?

A paper describing an online survey of coral reef scientists about what they think the baseline is for corals and macroalgal percent cover.  

 

To assess the opinions of the coral reef science community (including scientists, managers, students, enthusiasts, etc.) about the baseline values for coral and macroalgal cover on the world’s reefs, I set up a SurveyMonkey online survey.

 

I asked four questions:

1) What is the Caribbean baseline for macroalgae? “Macroalgae” includes fleshy and calcareous species (e.g., Halimeda) but not turf or calcareous encrusting algae.

2) What is Caribbean baseline for coral? “Coral” includes stony, scleractinian corals (not soft corals).

3) What is the Indo-Pacific baseline for macroalgae?

4) What is Indo-Pacific baseline for coral?