Project R-16049

REEFDREAM: Coral REEF Diversity REsearch And Monitoring in the Philippines (Education)

Coral reefs are rapidly degrading due to human activity and climate change. This threatens coastal livelihoods,especially in the Philippines, home to the world's richest reef biodiversity. Monitoring coral reef biodiversity trends iscrucial for effective conservation, but it requires expertise in spatiotemporal biodiversity assessment and advancedecological statistics, which many Filipino institutions lack. Success also relies on local community involvement indata collection and goal-setting, enhancing public ownership. In REEFDREAM, Visayas State University, supported by Hasselt University, builds interdisciplinary researchcapacity in ecological statistics. Collaborating with fishing communities, REEFDREAM focuses on expert- andcommunity-based data collection in local coral reefs, coral reef metacommunity model development, and workshopsto train researchers and stakeholders on ecological analysis, which will be adapted for implementation in anapproved MS program in Statistics.

01 September 2025 - 31 August 2027