The status of the Millennium Coral Reef Mapping

Frank E Muller-Karger, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, fmullerkarger@umassd.edu (Presenting)
Serge Andrefouet, IRD France, serge.andrefouet@gmail.com
Christine Kranenburg, University of South Florida, kranenbu@marine.usf.edu
Damaris Torres-Pulliza, University of South Florida, damaris@marine.usf.edu

The Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project is systematically mapping coral reefs throughout the planet using more than 1800 Landsat 7 images. Within the last four years, 85% of global islands, atolls and reefs have been mapped using a unique, consistent, and rich geomorphological classification scheme consisting of approximately 800 classes. Several atlases of coral reefs have also been produced (French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Southeast Papua New Guinea). The Atlas of Pacific Coral Reefs is nearing completion and is scheduled for release at ICRS 2008. It will include American Samoa, Clipperton, Cook Islands, Coral Sea reefs, Fiji, French Polynesia, Hawaii and US islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New-Caledonia, Niue, Northern Marianna Islands, Palau, Pitcairn, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Wallis and Futuna. The created maps provide a significant improvement to any regional scale coral reef map products, both in spatial accuracy and thematic richness, with as much as 180 classes of reefs per country. In many cases they provide the first robust and precise estimates of coral reefs extent and diversity. Both the raw imagery and the finished products are freely available for download. The raw imagery is available from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center at http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi/landsat.pl and the finished products are located at http://www.imars.usf.edu/MC.