Great Barrier Reef Coral Cover Predictions with Heat Stress Data, 2006-2024

ReefCloud public data supports a predictive model for annual hard coral cover across the central Great Barrier Reef. The model aggregates monitoring observations into 5x5km hexagonal units and incorporates exposure to heat stress and tropical cyclones. This dataset is provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network for reproducing a use case from a 2026 paper.

Use Cases

• Predict annual hard coral cover across monitored and unmonitored reefs based on aggregated monitoring data.
• Model the impact of heat stress exposure on coral reef ecosystems.
• Analyze the influence of tropical cyclones on coral cover trends.
• Reproduce spatial-scale predictive modeling workflows as described in the associated paper.

Strengths

• Data spans a 19-year period from 2006 to 2024.
• Spatial modeling incorporates exposure to heat stress and tropical cyclones.
• Observations are aggregated into a standardized 5x5km hexagonal grid for analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the central Great Barrier Reef subregion.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Individual monitoring observations from the public ReefCloud platform aggregated into 5x5km hexagonal units.

Time Range

2006-2024

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 02:41:31.292939; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Central subregion of the Great Barrier Reef