Coral reef habitat mapping using remote sensing: A user vs producer perspective. implications for research, management and capacity building

Abstract

Remote sensing is a tool that shows its real power and value for large‐scale work. However, published coral reef applications often still focus on spatially limited pilot sites which are investigated for research purposes, while synoptic, reliable and thematically rich habitat maps are in growing demand everywhere around the Planet for a variety of applications. The observed failure in widespread generalization is primarily due to differences in the criteria that scientists (producers) and managers (users) have to obey in their respective professional activities. To enhance the situation and promote mass production of habitat maps, especially in a capacity building context, the traditional producer's habitat mapping flow chart is challenged and compared with a user's flow chart that has been repeatedly applied to high resolution images for a variety of recent management projects. The user's flow chart is a drastic simplification of the producer's chart. It conforms to different principles, in the search for representativity and specificity and thus exhaustivity. The habitat maps donerespecting these principles provide a spectacular increase in the ratio habitat complexity/accuracy that was previously the norm. However, in addition to basic knowledge on a limited set of image processing techniques, the user's chart implies that practitioners in both developed and developing countries also acquire expertise in recognizing coral reef structures to be able to take advantage of the empirical but efficient a priori contextual editing techniques. The proposed user's flow chart should be promoted by funding agencies for capacity building in order to quickly fill the current gaps in reliable geographical data.