Great Barrier Reef 10m Grid Benthic Habitat Map from Satellite and Field Data

A geospatial benthic habitat map for the offshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, produced at a 10-meter resolution. The map was generated by the University of Queensland's Remote Sensing Research Centre using a machine learning model trained on over 100,000 geolocated photos and environmental data layers like satellite imagery, depth, slope, and wave climate. This snapshot was taken in January 2023 for the Seamap Australia project.

Use Cases

• Modeling coral reef ecosystem health based on mapped benthic habitat types.
• Analyzing the relationship between environmental covariates like water depth and habitat distribution.
• Validating remote sensing classification algorithms using the described machine learning and validation methodology.
• Informing marine park management and conservation planning for the Great Barrier Reef based on the habitat coverage.

Strengths

• Training data includes over 100,000 geolocated benthic photos from approximately 100 reefs.
• Model integrates multiple environmental data layers including satellite imagery, bathymetry, slope, and wave climate.
• Includes a validation step using withheld occurrence data to check mapping performance.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Covers only the offshore or mid and outer-shelf reefs of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
• Data is a snapshot from January 2023; an updated version may be available from the source provider.

Provenance

Source

Remote Sensing Research Centre at the University of Queensland, via the GBRMP Reef Knowledge System and Australian Ocean Data Network.

Collection Method

Supervised machine learning (e.g., random forest) applied to photo occurrences and environmental layers, followed by contextual editing with object-based rulesets.

Time Range

Snapshot taken January 2023.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-16 03:37:50.178378; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Offshore (mid and outer-shelf) reefs of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, Australia.