NOAA Coral Reef Photomosaics from Cheeca Rocks, Florida

Six high-resolution photomosaic TIFF images document benthic communities across six 10m x 10m reef plots at Cheeca Rocks Coral Reef in Islamorada, Florida. The dataset was produced by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program as part of the National Coral Reef Monitoring Program on July 11, 2016. Each mosaic is a composite of 1500-3000 individual underwater images, stitched together using Agisoft Photoscan to create a landscape view of the reef.

Use Cases

• Analyzing coral cover and species distribution across six distinct 100-square-meter reef plots.
• Training computer vision models for automated benthic classification using high-resolution geotagged imagery.
• Establishing a spatial baseline for monitoring coral reef health and structural complexity in the Florida Reef Tract.
• Conducting photogrammetric analysis to measure colony sizes and quantify reef rugosity from stitched image data.

Strengths

• Each mosaic provides a high-resolution landscape view synthesized from 1500-3000 source images.
• Data collection follows a standardized NOAA NCRMP protocol, ensuring methodological consistency.
• Images capture a specific, known geographic location (Cheeca Rocks, Florida) across six precisely defined plots.

Limitations

• Key metadata conflicts exist: the 'last updated' date differs between Data.gov (2026) and NASA Earthdata (2016).
• No column-level metadata, license information, or exact file size details are provided by any source.
• The dataset is limited to a single collection event (2016-07-11) at one reef site, restricting temporal analysis.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Coral Reef Conservation Program, National Coral Reef Monitoring Program (NCRMP).

Collection Method

Scuba divers used a two-camera mosaic rig, swimming in a crosshatch pattern 1-2 meters above the benthos to capture overlapping images, which were compiled using Agisoft Photoscan.

Time Range

2016-07-11

Freshness

Data collection date is 2016-07-11. A conflicting metadata 'last updated' field shows 2026-03-05 on Data.gov and 2016-07-11 on NASA Earthdata.

Geography

Cheeca Rocks Coral Reef, Islamorada, Florida, USA (Atlantic Ocean, Florida Reef Tract).