INTEGRATED CORAL OBSERVING NETWORK (ICON)

This section provides information about the ICON project:

CCMI is proud to be an integral part of a global effort to monitor and study coral reefs worldwide. CCMI and NOAA Research have partnered to place a monitoring station in Little Cayman within Bloody Bay Marine Park. Along with NOAA, CCMI has invested in instrumentation that will gather data and help generate a better understanding of how climate change is being recorded in the ocean.

The monitoring station is a sophisticated device containing instruments that measure a broad range of local atmospheric and oceanic conditions (e.g. air & sea temperature, wind speed & direction, barometric pressure, photosynthetically available radiation (PAR), ultraviolet radiation (UVR), and salinity).

The station transmits the near real-time data to NOAA Research for integration, analysis, and inferencing. The data is then made available to researchers, marine-protected area personnel, and the public.

The entire data collection and processing system, when used specifically to understand coral bleaching and coral reef-related events, is called the "Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS)". This system is considered part of the Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) and is thus named ICON/CREWS.

The CREWS system has been successfully used in modeling and alerts of coral bleaching conditions in the Florida Keys and the Great Barrier Reef. It is NOAA's intent to expand this alerting capability to other coral reef areas and to better refine and enhance its alerting capabilities beyond coral bleaching.

"Stick in the Water" - example of a typical ICON monitoring station. Image courtesy of J. Hendee, NOAA.