Project - Coral Sea Mapping 2021-2025 (AIMS, Parks Australia)
This project developed a set of high quality GIS datasets of the emergent and shallow marine features (reef boundaries, reef tops, islands, and cays) of the Coral Sea Marine Park (CSMP). The goal of this mapping was to improve the precision and spatial detail of existing reef maps.
Features mapped as openly available shapefiles:
- Coral atoll platform boundary - outer visible extent combined with available multi-beam bathymetry (100 m depth)
- Coral reef boundary - coral substrate, plus connected sand, raised off atoll platform, mapped to 50 - 60 m depth.
- Depth contours (5 m and 20 m depth)
- Coral cays regions (above mean high water over time)
The inspiration for this project was to map the Coral Sea in a manner similar to the existing reef mapping of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) and Torres Strait (Lawrey, et al. 2016) to assist with the management of the Coral Sea Marine Park. Mapped reef features were to be allocated permanent identifiers to allow robust communication about reefs where no existing name exists.
Reef features were mapped primarily from composite satellite imagery (Sentinel 2, Landsat 8-9 and Sentinel 3) with existing bathymetry surveys used to assist in the interpretation, calibration and validation of the mapping approaches. All features were manually mapped, and reviewed extensively.
The boundary of coral reefs previously been only loosely defined making it difficult to reliably map their boundaries in a repeatable manner. In this project we develop more robust definition based on the presence of hard substrate built by coral suitable for hard coral growth. Reef patches are clustered together, using rules, to form the reef boundary at the same scale as what would normally be considered a coral reef. This approach help to ensure consistent and repeatable quality across the manual mapping process.
References:
Lawrey, E. P., and Stewart, M. (2016) Mapping the Torres Strait Reef and Island Features: Extending the GBR Features (GBRMPA) dataset. Report to the National Environmental Science Programme. Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Limited, Cairns (103pp.).
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2021-12-01T00:00:00
- Purpose
- This project aims to provide a more detailed spatial map of reef features to improve planning and management of the Coral Sea Marine Park
- Credit
- This project was co-funded by Parks Australia and the Australian Institute of Marine Science
- Status
- Completed
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation Name Telephone Delivery point City Administrative area Postal code Country Electronic mail address Principal investigator Australian Institute of Marine Science Lawrey, Eric Townsville Queensland 4810 Australia e.lawrey@aims.gov.au Collaborator Capricornia Catchments Bycroft, Rachel Collaborator Australian Institute of Marine Science Hammerton, Marc
- Topic category
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- Biota
Extent
Extent
- Description
- Project extent
Temporal extent
- Time period
- 2021-08-01 2025-03-31
- Keywords (Theme)
-
- marine
- AODN Geographic Extents Vocabulary
-
- Regional Seas | Coral Sea
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- Reports, published papers and datasets
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
- urn:uuid/5eade21a-5f08-46c8-a612-5de83d744109
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
-
Role Organisation Name Telephone Delivery point City Administrative area Postal code Country Electronic mail address Point of contact Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) eAtlas Data Manager Voice PRIVATE MAIL BAG 3, TOWNSVILLE MAIL CENTRE Townsville Queensland 4810 Australia e-atlas@aims.gov.au
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Field session
- Name
- NESP MaC hub Project
- Metadata linkage
-
https://eatlas.org.au/data/uuid/5eade21a-5f08-46c8-a612-5de83d744109
Point of truth URL of this metadata record
- Date info (Creation)
- 2015-12-10T16:08:28
- Date info (Revision)
- 2025-03-07T04:24:29.016Z
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO 19115-3:2018
Overviews
Spatial extent
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