Fine-scale time series surveys reveal new insights into spatio-temporal trends in coral cover (2002–2018), of a coral reef on the Southern Great Barrier Reef

Reef monitoring programmes often focus on limited sites, predominantly on reef slope areas, which do not capture compositional variability across zones. This study assessed spatial and temporal changes in hard coral cover at four hierarchical spatial scales. ~ 55,000, geo-referenced photoquadrats were collected annually from 2002 to 2018 and analysed using artificial intelligence for 31 sites across reef flat and reef slope zones on Heron Reef, Southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Trends in hard coral cover were examined at three spatial scales: (1) “reef scale”, all data; (2) “geomorphic zone scale”—north/south reef slope, inner/outer reef flat; and (3) “site scale”—31 sites. Coral cover trajectories were also examined at: (4) “sub-site scale”—sub-division of sites into 567 sub-sites, to estimate variability in coral cover trajectories via spatial statistical modelling. At reef scale coral cover increased over time to 25.6 ± 0.4 SE % in 2018 but did not recover following disturbances caused by disease (2004–2008), cyclonic conditions (2009) or severe storms (2015) to the observed pre-disturbance level (44.0 ± 0.7 SE %) seen in 2004. At geomorphic zone scale, the reef slope had significantly higher coral cover than the reef flat. Trends of decline and increase were visible in the slope zones, and the southern slope recovered to pre-decline levels. Variable coral cover trends were visible at site scale. Furthermore, sub-site spatial modelling captured eight years of coral recovery that occurred at different times and magnitudes across the four geomorphic zones, effectively estimating variability in the trajectory of the reef’s coral community. Derived spatial predictions for the entire reef show patchy coral recovery, particularly on the southern slope, and that recovery hotspots are distributed across the reef. These findings suggest that to fully understand and interpret coral decline or recovery on a reef, more accurate assessment can be achieved by examining sites distributed within different geomorphic zones to capture variation in exposure, depth and consolidation.