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Monitoring changes in coral reef communities of Singapore using the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tool
Author
Tan, Siao Lin
Supervisor
Goh, Beverly P. L. (Beverly Pi Lee)
Abstract
The scleractinian reef communities of 44 fringing and patch reefs located at the south of Singapore were studied using the Line Intercept Transect method. Altogether 118 sites accounting for a total of 11.9 km of reefs were surveyed. The various scleractinian corals were categorized into their respective taxonomic genera and identified to species level for this study. Results indicated that high species diversity still exists in Singapore with a total of 53 genera of hard corals, representing 17 families and comprising 141 species documented (including the non-scleractinian reef building genera Heliopora and Tubipora). Live coral cover ranged from 5.34% to 78.71% and the dominant family was the Faviidae, which accounted for 30.30% of the hard corals observed. Goniastrea (Faviidae) was the most common genus accounting for 10.68% of the hard corals observed. This was followed closely by the genus Pectinia at 10.64%. The most abundant single species observed was Pectinia paeonia which accounted for 10.26% of the total coral cover. The most widespread species were Merulina ampliata and Montastrea curta which were found in 43 out of 44 reefs. The largest coral colony recorded was from the family Poritidae, Alveopora gigas, at Pulau Hantu, which was 9.73m across. The prevailing lifeforms were laminar (37.86%) and massive (31.88%) with the free-living (mushroom) lifeform most poorly represented at only 1.83%. Raffles Lighthouse had the highest hard coral diversity and live coral cover, while Midway Reef had the lowest. Terumbu Pandan ranked highest in terms of evenness, while Pulau Senang Further North Patch ranked lowest. Multivariate nMDS ordination indicated a loose clustering of the reefs into four main groups sharing similar scleractinian coral assemblages. The coral species and community data were incorporated into a GIS basemap using ARCGIS overlaid with identified anthropogenic activities in the vicinity of the reefs. Spatial analysis highlighted a possible link between these anthropogenic activities and impact on the coral diversity, evenness and live coral cover at the reefs.
Date Issued
2014
Call Number
QH541.5.C7 Tan
Date Submitted
2014