Code for Generating Benthic PAR and Water Quality Index for the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the focus of this dataset containing code to generate daily benthic photosynthetically active radiation (bPAR) and a derived water quality index. The code, developed through NESP TWQ projects, uses NASA MODIS Ocean Color data and bathymetry to estimate light at the seafloor on a nominal 1 km² grid. It includes C code for generating the bPAR product and an R script for calculating the index and generating visualizations.

Use Cases

• Modeling benthic light availability for coral reef health based on satellite-derived ocean color data.
• Calculating a water quality index for the Great Barrier Reef based on cumulative seasonal and annual light stress.
• Visualizing spatial and temporal variations in benthic light penetration across NRM regions and water bodies.
• Assessing the relationship between river load and light availability for benthic photosynthesizing organisms.

Strengths

• Methodology is detailed and references specific publications (Magno-Canto et al. 2019, 2020; McKinna et al. 2015).
• Spatial resolution is specified as a nominal 1 km² grid across the study region.
• The derived index is scaled to a defined range between 0 and 1 for interpretability.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset primarily contains code (PNG, HTML) rather than the processed data products themselves.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, associated with NESP TWQ projects 2.3.1 and 5.3, AIMS, JCU, and Go2Q.

Collection Method

Daily bPAR derived from NASA MODIS Ocean Color data and Beaman (2010) bathymetry using the SWIM and Magno-Canto algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-14 08:19:05.427847; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Great Barrier Reef, Australia.