• IMAS Metadata Catalogue
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IMOS - National Reef Monitoring Network Sub-Facility - Global benthic cover data (photoquadrat image annotations)

The National Reef Monitoring Network brings together shallow reef surveys conducted around Australia into a centralised database. The IMOS National Reef Monitoring Network sub-Facility collates, cleans, stores and makes this data rapidly available from contributors including: Reef Life Survey, Parks Australia, Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (Western Australia), Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources (South Australia), Department of Primary Industries (New South Wales), Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service and Parks Victoria.


The data provided by the National Reef Monitoring Network contributes to establishing and supporting national marine baselines, and assisting with the management of Commonwealth and State marine reserves.


Reef Life Survey (RLS) and the Australian Temperate Reef Network (ATRC) aims to improve biodiversity conservation and the sustainable management of marine resources by coordinating surveys of rocky and coral reefs using scientific methods, with the ultimate goal to improve coastal stewardship. Our activities depend on the skills of marine scientists, experienced and motivated recreational SCUBA divers, partnerships with management agencies and university researchers, and active input from the ATRC partners and RLS Advisory Committee.


RLS and ATRC data are freely available to the public for non-profit purposes, so not only managers, but also groups such as local dive clubs or schools may use these data to look at changes over time in their own local reefs. By making data freely available and through public outputs, RLS and ATRC aims to raise broader community awareness of the status of Australia's marine biodiversity and associated conservation issues.


This dataset contains data on the habitat composition scored from photoquadrats taken by Reef Life Survey (RLS) and Australian Temperate Reef Collaboration (ATRC) divers and partners along 50m transects on shallow rocky and coral reefs. 20 images are taken along each 50 m transect line at 2.5 m intervals, and images were annotated using a point-overlay approach (usually with 5 points per image overlaid and labelled using standardised schemes of habitat categories). The data are generated using two different methodologies: full-biodiversity (comprehensive labelling of all habitat components) and targeted (labelling of target taxa only, eg. habitat-forming corals). Values are given as percent coverage for each 50 m transect-analysis, as denoted by it's unique dataset_id.


Images, annotation statistics, the RLS standardised label scheme and associated exemplar images, can be viewed online at squidle.org. Image and annotation statistics are also available in the related IMOS collections:

- IMOS - Understanding of Marine Imagery (UMI) Sub-Facility - Squidle+ Annotation counts by Campaign ( https://catalogue-imos.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/api/records/5a94a2cf-0810-44ea-a28d-cc8a5c30fbd7)

- IMOS - Understanding of Marine Imagery (UMI) Sub-Facility - Squidle+ Imagery and Tracks by Deployment ( https://catalogue-imos.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/api/records/0c9bdfd6-2760-4bde-8230-241132790701)


This dataset supersedes the RLS specific "Reef Life Survey (RLS): Habitat Quadrats " collection that was available at https://catalogue-rls.imas.utas.edu.au/geonetwork/srv/en/metadata.show?uuid=6e9c4980-1005-11dd-b28e-00188b4c0af8 (provision of data was stopped in June 2021).

Simple

Identification info

Alternate title
NRMN - Benthic cover data (photoquadrats)
Date (Publication)
2021-05-21T00:00:00

Contributor

Reef Life Survey Foundation (RLS)
60 Napolean Street
Battery Point
Tasmania
7001
Australia
Website of Reef Life Survey >

Distributor

Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS)
Private Bag 110
Hobart
Tasmania
7001
Australia
61 3 6226 7549
61 3 6226 2107 (facsimile)
Website of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) >

Hours of service
9am to 5pm UTC+10: Monday to Friday
Credit
Reef Life Survey and Australian Temperate Reef Collaboration partners
Credit
This research used Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) infrastructure for database support and storage. IMOS is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and is operated by a consortium of institutions as an unincorporated joint venture, with the University of Tasmania as Lead Agent.
Status
On going

Point of contact

Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) - Data Officer
University of Tasmania
Private Bag 110
Hobart
Tasmania
7001
Australia
61 3 6226 7488
61 3 6226 2107 (facsimile)
Website of the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) >

Point of contact

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania (UTAS) - Oh, Elizabeth (Program Support Officer)
IMAS - Taroona
Private Bag 49
Hobart
Tasmania
7001
Australia
+61 3 6226 8347
+61 3 6227 8035 (facsimilie)
Topic category
  • Oceans
  • Biota
  • Environment

Extent





























































































































































































































































Temporal extent

Time period
2006-09-02

Vertical element

Minimum value
0
Maximum value
50
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed
AODN Geographic Extents Vocabulary
  • Marine Features (Australia) | Bass Strait, TAS/VIC
  • Marine Features (Australia) | Gulf St. Vincent, SA
  • Global / Oceans | Atlantic Ocean
  • Regional Seas | Gulf of Thailand
  • Global / Oceans | Indian Ocean
  • Regional Seas | Tasman Sea
  • Regional Seas | Bismarck Sea
  • Regional Seas | Banda Sea
  • Regional Seas | Solomon Sea
  • Regional Seas | Timor Sea
  • Regional Seas | Arafura Sea
  • Global / Oceans | Pacific Ocean
  • Global / Oceans | World
  • Regional Seas | Coral Sea
  • Regional Seas | Red Sea
  • Global / Oceans | Southern Ocean
AODN Platform Vocabulary
  • diver
AODN Discovery Parameter Vocabulary
  • Biotic taxonomic identification
AODN Organisation Vocabulary
  • Marine Imagery Sub-Facility, Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS)
  • National Reef Monitoring Network Sub-Facility, Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS)
GCMD Earth Science and Earth Science Services Keywords
  • CORAL REEF
  • BENTHIC
  • KELP FOREST
GCMD Earth Science and Earth Science Services Keywords
  • MACROALGAE (SEAWEEDS)
  • IMAGE PROCESSING

Resource constraints

Use limitation
Data, products and services from IMOS are provided "as is" without any warranty as to fitness for a particular purpose.

Resource constraints

Linkage
https://licensebuttons.net/l/by/4.0/88x31.png

License Graphic

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License


>

Website
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

License Text

Other constraints
The citation in a list of references is: "Reef Life Survey (RLS); Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), [year-of-data-download], IMOS - National Reef Monitoring Network Sub-Facility - Global benthic cover data (photoquadrat image annotations), [data-access-URL], accessed [date-of-access]."
Other constraints
Please also utilise and cite this paper when using this data: Graham J. Edgar, Antonia Cooper, Susan C. Baker, William Barker, Neville S. Barrett, Mikel A. Becerro, Amanda E. Bates, Danny Brock, Daniela M. Ceccarelli, Ella Clausius, Marlene Davey, Tom R. Davis, Paul B. Day, Andrew Green, Samuel R. Griffiths, Jamie Hicks, Ivan A. Hinojosa, Ben K. Jones, Stuart Kininmonth, Meryl F. Larkin, Natali Lazzari, Jonathan S. Lefcheck, Scott D. Ling, Peter Mooney, Elizabeth Oh, Alejandro Perez-Matus, Jacqueline B. Pocklington, Rodrigo Riera, Jose A. Sanabria-Fernandez, Yanir Seroussi, Ian Shaw, Derek Shields, Joe Shields, Margo Smith, German A. Soler, Jemina Stuart-Smith, John Turnbull, Rick D. Stuart-Smith. Establishing the ecological basis for conservation of shallow marine life using Reef Life Survey, Biological Conservation, Volume 252, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108855
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8
Supplemental Information
Graham J. Edgar, Antonia Cooper, Susan C. Baker, William Barker, Neville S. Barrett, Mikel A. Becerro, Amanda E. Bates, Danny Brock, Daniela M. Ceccarelli, Ella Clausius, Marlene Davey, Tom R. Davis, Paul B. Day, Andrew Green, Samuel R. Griffiths, Jamie Hicks, Ivan A. Hinojosa, Ben K. Jones, Stuart Kininmonth, Meryl F. Larkin, Natali Lazzari, Jonathan S. Lefcheck, Scott D. Ling, Peter Mooney, Elizabeth Oh, Alejandro Perez-Matus, Jacqueline B. Pocklington, Rodrigo Riera, Jose A. Sanabria-Fernandez, Yanir Seroussi, Ian Shaw, Derek Shields, Joe Shields, Margo Smith, German A. Soler, Jemina Stuart-Smith, John Turnbull, Rick D. Stuart-Smith. Establishing the ecological basis for conservation of shallow marine life using Reef Life Survey, Biological Conservation, Volume 252, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108855 Althaus F, Hill N, Ferrari R, Edwards L, Przeslawski R, Schonberg CHL, et al. (2015) A Standardised Vocabulary for Identifying Benthic Biota and Substrata from Underwater Imagery: The CATAMI Classification Scheme. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141039. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141039

Content Information

Content type
Physical measurement

Identifier

Code
Biotic taxonomic identification

Distribution Information

OnLine resource
NRMN page on IMOS website

OnLine resource
View and download data though the AODN Portal

OnLine resource
Website of Australian Temperate Reef Collaboration (ATRC)

OnLine resource
Reef Life Survey Explorer

OnLine resource
Access to Edgar et. al. (2020) Biological Conservation paper

OnLine resource
CATAMI paper - RLS habitat categories extend this scheme

OnLine resource
Reef Life Survey Methods Manual

OnLine resource
Australian Temperate Reef Collaboration Methods Manual

OnLine resource
NRMN Database QA/QC Protocols Manual

OnLine resource
RLS Image Annotation Protocol Manual

OnLine resource
Technical description of product

OnLine resource
Access To AWS Open Data Program registry for the Cloud Optimised version of this dataset (data is not yet available)

OnLine resource
Access to Jupyter notebook to query Cloud Optimised converted dataset (notebook is not yet available)

Resource lineage

Statement
Dataset_id replaces the survey_id found in other layers of the NRMN collection, because images from each survey can yield multiple sets of observations (annotation sets) if separate assessments are completed. Dataset_id is a numeric string consisting of survey_id (which can be used to link to fish and invertebrate observations), followed by identifiers for the set of habitat categories used for annotation (label scheme) and each discreet collection of annotation data (annotation set id). For details on the standardised survey procedures (specifically Digital Photo-quadrats in this case), please refer to the relevant Methods Manual (link provided in Distribution section)
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Platform

Identifier

Code
diver

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/0a65be6d-1c76-49ac-a151-80acf123612c

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distributor

Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) - Data Officer
University of Tasmania
Private Bag 110
Hobart
Tasmania
7001
Australia
61 3 6226 7488
61 3 6226 2107 (facsimile)
Website of the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) >

Parent metadata
  • IMOS - National Reef Monitoring Network Sub-Facility

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Name
IMOS dataset level record
Metadata linkage
https://catalogue-imos.aodn.org.au:443/geonetwork/srv/api/records/0a65be6d-1c76-49ac-a151-80acf123612c

Point of truth URL of this metadata record

Date info (Creation)
2021-05-21T12:00:00
Date info (Revision)
2026-02-20T14:39:44

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-3:2018
 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

Keywords

AODN Discovery Parameter Vocabulary
Biotic taxonomic identification
AODN Platform Vocabulary
diver
GCMD Earth Science and Earth Science Services Keywords
BENTHIC CORAL REEF IMAGE PROCESSING KELP FOREST MACROALGAE (SEAWEEDS)

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Access to the record in catalogue
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available


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