Abstract

The goal of the NASA-funded Millennium Coral Reef Map is to archive and provide scientists and managers maps of worldwide coral reef distribution using 30 m resolution Landsat satellite data. The resultant GIS maps are the highest resolution, most accurate global coral reef maps in existence, and replace the previous ReefBase maps. Earlier maps of reef areas were limited by low resolution mapping scales, and regionally variable definitions of reef zonation. To make the maps as meaningful and widely applicable as possible, we used global satellite coverage and applied a uniform reef zone classification with ~1,000 geomorphologic classes stratified into a four-level hierarchy. In the Meso-American region, for example, regional reefs are mapped into 101 different classes. In Roatan alone, there are 25 classes of reef area. These maps are particularly useful by applying remote sensing techniques to fill critical knowledge gaps in the poorly surveyed regions of the Caribbean, and deliver a platform for extrapolating local observations to regional models. As such, the Millennium Coral Reef Map gives managers a spatially explicit GIS tool for applications in fisheries management, and marine protected area design and decision support

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