Abstract
Abstract. Structural complexity in ecosystems creates an assortment of microhabitat types and has been shown to support greater diversity and abundance of associated organisms. The 3D structure of an environment also directly affects important ecological parameters such as habitat provisioning and light availability and can therefore strongly influence ecosystem function. Coral reefs are architecturally complex 3D habitats, whose structure is intrinsically linked to the ecosystem biodiversity, productivity, and function. The field of coral ecology has, however, been primarily limited to using 2-dimensional (2D) planar survey techniques for studying the physical structure of reefs. This conventional approach fails to capture or quantify the intricate structural complexity of corals that influences habitat facilitation and biodiversity. A 3-dimensional (3D) approach can obtain accurate measurements of architectural complexity, topography, rugosity, volume, and other structural characteristics that affect biodiversity and abundance of reef organisms. Structurefrom- Motion (SfM) photogrammetry is an emerging computer vision technology that provides a simple and cost-effective method for 3D reconstruction of natural environments. SfM has been used in several studies to investigate the relationship between habitat complexity and ecological processes in coral reef ecosystems. This study compared two commercial SfM software packages, Agisoft Photoscan Pro and Pix4Dmapper Pro 3.1, in order to assess the cpaability and spatial accuracy of these programs for conducting 3D modeling of coral reef habitats at three spatial scales.
Highlights
The three-dimensional (3D) structural complexity of an ecosystem plays a key role in habitat provisioning and fundamental ecological processes
Metrics derived from the 3D reconstruction process were compared between Agisoft Photoscan Pro and Pix4Dmapper Pro 3.1 to assess the efficacy and spatial accuracy of these programs
Total spatial error, and reprojection error were used to investigate the ability of each software package to align underwater images and create spatially accurate 3D models that can be used for coral ecology studies
Summary
The three-dimensional (3D) structural complexity of an ecosystem plays a key role in habitat provisioning and fundamental ecological processes. Habitat structural complexity creates an array of ecological niches and has been shown to support high levels of diversity and abundance of organisms (Crowder and Cooper 1982, Guinan et al 2009, Graham and Nash 2013). The complex habitats created by corals support some of the most diverse, productive, and economically valuable ecosystems on the planet (Costanza et al 1997, Moberg and Folke 1999, Hoegh-Guldber et al 2007). The dynamic linkages between reef complexity and ecological processes are poorly understood as reefs have been conventionally assessed using two-dimensional (2D) metrics that are incapable of quantifying structural complexity (Alvarez-Filip et al 2011, Graham and Nash 2013). Accurate measures of 3D reef structure are needed to determine how changes in coral cover and composition will alter large-scale processes and ecosystem services
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