A contemporary baseline record of the world\u2019s coral reefs

Alberto Rodriguez-Ramirez,Christophe Bailhache,Peter Dalton,Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,Anjani Ganase,Catherine J S Kim,Veronica Z Radice,Dominic E P Bryant,Hawthorne L Beyer,Sebastian Lopez-Marcano,Kristen T Brown,Benjamin P Neal,Emma V Kennedy,Julie Vercelloni,Pim Bongaerts,Manuel González-Rivero,Sophie Dove,Oscar Beijbom

doi:10.1038/s41597-020-00698-6

Abstract

Addressing the global decline of coral reefs requires effective actions from managers, policymakers and society as a whole. Coral reef scientists are therefore challenged with the task of providing prompt and relevant inputs for science-based decision-making. Here, we provide a baseline dataset, covering 1300 km of tropical coral reef habitats globally, and comprised of over one million geo-referenced, high-resolution photo-quadrats analysed using artificial intelligence to automatically estimate the proportional cover of benthic components. The dataset contains information on five major reef regions, and spans 2012–2018, including surveys before and after the 2016 global bleaching event. The taxonomic resolution attained by image analysis, as well as the spatially explicit nature of the images, allow for multi-scale spatial analyses, temporal assessments (decline and recovery), and serve for supporting image recognition developments. This standardised dataset across broad geographies offers a significant contribution towards a sound baseline for advancing our understanding of coral reef ecology and thereby taking collective and informed actions to mitigate catastrophic losses in coral reefs worldwide.

Highlights

Background & SummaryThe escalating deterioration of coral reefs over the past half-century[1,2] has imposed urgent challenges for coral reef science[3,4], especially at the spatial and temporal scales[5] required to support science-based management and conservation at global scales[6,7]
Novel research and management approaches that consider current ecological and socio-cultural paradigms of coral reefs are pivotal for addressing such challenges[4,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
An underwater propulsion vehicle customised with a camera system (“SVII”, Supplementary Fig. 1), consisting of three synchronised DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) cameras (Cannon 5D-MkII cameras and Nikon Fisheye Nikkor lens with 10.5 mm focal length), was used to survey the fore-reef habitats from five major coral reef regions: Central Pacific Ocean, Western Atlantic Ocean, Central Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and Eastern Australia in 23 countries or territories (Table 1, Supplementary Fig. 2)

Summary

Introduction

Background & SummaryThe escalating deterioration of coral reefs over the past half-century[1,2] has imposed urgent challenges for coral reef science[3,4], especially at the spatial and temporal scales[5] required to support science-based management and conservation at global scales[6,7]. As a part of the manual and automated annotation processes to extract benthic cover estimates, label-sets of benthic categories were established based on their functional relevance to coral reef ecosystems and their features to be reliably identified from images by human annotators[25].

Results

Conclusion