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This book aims to help people manage coral reefs and other coastal ecosystems; especially to solve problems that flow from nearby catchment (watershed) areas. Such catchment areas may be adjacent to the coral reef, or include areas a long way away and outside the jurisdiction and control of the coastal manager. This book introduces ways to reduce some of that damage through cooperation with people and industries upstream, based on the experiences of many coastal managers around the world. A catchment area is defined as all the land that channels rainwater and groundwater into a river or stream, that then delivers water to coastal areas, in this case areas that contain coral reefs. The term catchment is often interchangeable with watershed, which is particularly used in the USA and nearby countries. However, watershed is also used to describe the boundary line between two catchment areas i.e. a line drawn across the tops of hills or mountains.

This Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2008 report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network summarises what has happened to the world's coral reefs since 2004 and uses expert opinion of coral reef scientists and managers from 96 countries and states to make predictions on what could happen to coral reefs in the future. This combined expertise also seeks to provide advice to the world's decision makers on what should be done to allow us to bequeath healthy coral reefs to future generations. The release of this report coincides with the end of the International Year of the Reef (IYOR 2008), which has focussed considerable global attention on coral reefs.