Coral reef management is increasingly focused on supporting the resilience of coral communities to increasing and cumulative pressures. The coral index provides a concise summary of coral community resilience that can be efficiently communicated to a range of management and policy stakeholders. We detail the development of the index both as a technical reference for users but also as an example of an approach that could be more generally applied to the reporting of ecosystem resilience. The index is sensitive to acute impacts that are expected when coral communities are exposed to disturbances such as cyclones, bleaching events or crown-of-thorns outbreaks. Importantly, spatial and temporal trends in the index enable the identification of areas and periods of reduced resilience that suggest chronic environmental pressure imposed by runoff. The ability to summarise complex ecological processes into a single index provides an efficient and intuitive tool for the communication of where, when and which pressures are impacting ecosystem resilience.

珊瑚礁管理越来越注重于支持珊瑚群落对不断增加的压力和累积压力的抵御能力。珊瑚指数提供了珊瑚群落复原力的简明摘要，可以有效地传达给一系列管理和政策利益相关者。我们详细介绍了该指数的发展，不仅为用户提供了技术参考，而且还提供了一种方法的示例，该方法可以更广泛地应用于生态系统复原力的报告。当珊瑚群落受到旋风，漂白事件或荆棘冠爆发等干扰时，该指数对预期的急性影响敏感。重要的是，该指数的时空趋势可以识别回弹力降低的区域和时段，这些地区和时段表明了径流带来的长期环境压力。