NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program monitors the biological, socioeconomic, and climate conditions of U.S. coral reefs and communities through the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP). The socioeconomic component of this program collects and monitors knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of coral reefs and coral reef management, human use of coral reef resources, and demographics of the populations living in coral reef areas.
The trends discussed below are based on survey results between South Florida's first (2014) and second (2019) monitoring cycles conducted in five coastal counties that border the majority of the state's coral reefs, known as the Florida coral reef tract. Florida is the only state in the continental United States to have extensive shallow coral reef formations near its coasts.
Grab a snapshot of the Florida report: download the full infographic (PDF) presented in this story.
Since 2014, the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP) socioeconomic team has collected data to determine the human use of coral reef resources and identify perceptions about coral reefs and coral reef management across all seven U.S. coral reef jurisdictions. These indicators allow researchers to measure the complex two-way relationship between the environment and humans.
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