Abstract
AbstractThe Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area in Queensland, Australia contains globally significant seagrasses supporting key ecosystem services, including habitat and food for threatened populations of dugong and turtle. We compiled 35 years of data in a spatial database, including 81,387 data points with georeferenced seagrass and species presence/absence, depth, dominant sediment type, and collection date. We include data collected under commercial contract that have not been publicly available. Twelve seagrass species were recorded. The deepest seagrass was found at 76 m. Seagrass meadows are at risk from anthropogenic, climate and weather processes. Our database is a valuable resource that provides coastal managers and the global marine community with a long‐term spatial resource describing seagrass populations from the mid‐1980s against which to benchmark change. We address the data issues involved in hindcasting over 30 years to ensure confidence in the accuracy and reliability of data included.
Highlights
Background and motivationThe Great Barrier Reef in tropical Northeastern Australia is the world’s most extensive coral reef structure, supporting a globally outstanding and biodiverse marine ecosystem
We have revisited, evaluated, simplified, standardized, and corrected individual records, including those from two to three decades ago by drawing on the knowledge of one of our authors (RC) who led the early seagrass data collection and mapping programs. We provide this extensive seagrass data set, along with an interactive website, as a tool for the global marine research community to interrogate species distributions and to benchmark trends through time in this iconic World Heritage Area
Seagrass taxonomy has changed through time, with species such as Halophila ovata no longer recognized and some doubts expressed about other species whose morphology is relatively plastic
Summary
The Great Barrier Reef in tropical Northeastern Australia is the world’s most extensive coral reef structure, supporting a globally outstanding and biodiverse marine ecosystem. It was inscribed as World Heritage in 1981 and covers an area of around 350,000 km, including 2500 km of coastline and a. Seagrass meadows are the most extensive benthic plant habitat in this lagoon, with more than 35,000 km previously estimated (Coles et al 2015) These meadows are essential for the health of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA) and provide important services including substrate stabilization, filtering organic matter from the water, recycling nitrogen, and baffling of wave and tidal energy (Kenworthy et al 2006). 1980s GBR-scale coastal surveys Cape York to Cairns Cairns to Bowen Bowen to Water Park Point Water Park Point to Hervey Bay GBR-scale deep-water surveys GBR Deep Water GBR Seabed Biodiversity Oil spill response atlas (OSRA) intertidal surveys Princess Charlotte Bay to Cape
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