Free Webinar “Early Warning Systems for Coral Reefs: Machine Learning for Conservation” on June 4, 2025

The Maui Nui Marine Resource Council (MNMRC) will host its first quarterly “Know Your Ocean Speaker Series” on Wednesday, June 4, 2025 featuring Dr. Lisa McManus of the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (University of Hawaiʻi) at 5:30 p.m.via Zoom.

Climate change is rapidly altering coral reefs worldwide, creating an urgent need for innovative approaches to conservation. In this talk, Dr. McManus will introduce how she is using machine learning to help protect coral reefs.

When reefs face stress such as warming oceans and overfishing, they can suddenly shift from vibrant and productive biodiversity hotspots to ecosystems with dramatically reduced habitat complexity and species abundance. These “regime shifts” happen quickly and are extremely difficult to reverse. But what if we could predict them before they happen?

Dr. McManus will share her work developing tools that combine ecological knowledge with advanced machine learning to forecast these critical transitions. She will show how these tools work, what they can potentially reveal about reef health, and how resource managers may eventually use them to prioritize protection efforts.

By bringing together ecology with cutting-edge technology, Dr. McManus and her collaborators aim to provide communities and managers with better information to protect these vital ecosystems for future generations. 

Registration for the talk is free and can be completed at https://bit.ly/4kaxDMC.