Reef survey techniques
Brian Long
brian.long at qld.ml.csiro.au
Sat Oct 28 23:15:08 UTC 1995
Hi,
I am a research scientist for CSIRO fisheries, Australia and am involved in
a project to do a reef resource inventory of the reefs of Torres Strait,
northern Australia. I would like to contact others that are doing this kind
of work.
We have Landsat TM satellite imagery of the reefs, ArcInfo GIS and Image
(image processing software). The objects of the project are to map the reef
habitats and to get information on the distribution and abundance of the
conspicuous megabenthos. The output of the project will be stored in a GIS
of the marine resources of Torres Strait. It will serve as a base map for
future monitoring and for designing cost-effective sampling programs to
estimate the abundance of selected species. We have already done one field
trip in February 1995 and go up again in November 1995. Part of our project
is to develop rapid field assessment techniques for quantifying reef cover
and the abundance of the conspicuous megabenthos. Last Feb. we sampled over
700 sites on 26 reefs in eastern Torres Strait. The correlation we got
between satellite imagery pixel values (red, green and blue) and percentage
cover (sand, live coral, algal pavement and rubble) was quite low (approx.
25% variation explained). Depth was better (66%). If anyone is doing similar
work I would love to hear how you are going. The maps we are creating from
the field work and satellite imagery is to serve as habitat base maps for
Torres Strait Reefs. We start a project in 1996 to estimate the standing
stock of Beche-de-mer in Torres Strait. The habitat maps and data we are
collecting from the current project will be used as pilot data to design a
stratified cost-effective sampling program to estimate Beche-de-mer standing
stock. If anyone else is doing this kind of work I'd also love to hear about it.
Brian Long
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Brian Long, Marine Ecologist E-mail: Brian.Long at qld.ml.csiro.au
CSIRO, Division of Fisheries Phone : +61 7 3286 8288
PO Box 120, Cleveland, Q 4163 Fax : +61 7 3286 2582
Australia
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