DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.14683815.v1
title: Red Sea Benthic Type Reference Sample

description: This benthic reference data is intended for use as a calibration and/or validation data for global scale remote sensing image based classification of coral reef areas. The data is in a vector shapefile format consisting of polygons labelled with one of seven coral reef benthic classes that include Microalgal Mats, Coral/Algae, Rubble, Rock, Seagrass Dense, Seagrass Sparse, Sand. <b>Please cite data as:</b> Roelfsema, C., Borrego-Acevedo, R., Canto, R., Harris, D., Kennedy, E., Kovacs, E., Lyons, M., Markey, K., Murray, N., Ordonez Alvarez, A., Phinn, S., Roe, M., Say, C., Tudman, P., C., Wolff, J., Yuwono, D., Bambric, B., Fox, H., Lieb, Z., Asner , G., Knapp , D., Li, J., Harris, B., Larsen, K. & Rice, K. 2021. Red Sea Benthic Type Reference Sample. University of Queensland. DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14683815 <b>Links to supplementary information:</b> Mapping methods overview (https://allencoralatlas.org/methods/) UQ mapping team web site (https://www.rsrc.org.au/globalreef) Detailed mapping methods description by Lyons et al. (https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.157) Detailed classification scheme description by Kennedy et al. (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00958-z) Detailed reference creation description workflow by Roelfsema et al. (https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.643381) <b>Funding:</b> Vulcan Inc., (https://vulcan.com) Great Barrier Reef Foundation (https://www.barrierreef.org/)<b>Acknowledgement:</b> This work was initiated and funded primarily through Paul Allen Philanthropies and Vulcan Inc. as part of the Allen Coral Atlas. We acknowledge the late Paul Allen and Ruth Gates for their fundamental vision and drive to enable us to work together on this critical reef mapping problem. Project partners providing financial, service and personnel include: Planet Inc., National Geographic, University of Queensland, Arizona State University, and University of Hawai'i. Significant support has also been provided by Google Inc., Great Barrier Reef Foundation, and Trimble (Ecognition). Contributors to establishing and running the project include: Vulcan Inc. [James Deutsch, Lauren Kickam, Paulina Gerstner, Charlie Whiton, Kirk Larsen, Sarah Frias Torres, Kyle Rice, Eldan Goldenberg, Janet Greenlee]; Planet Inc. [Andrew Zolli, Trevor McDonald, Joe Mascaro, Joe Kington]; University of Queensland [Chris Roelfsema, Stuart Phinn, Emma Kennedy, Mitch Lyons, Nicholas Murray, Doddy Yuwono, Dan Harris, Eva Kovacs, Rodney Borrego, Meredith Roe, Jeremy Wolff, Kathryn Markey, Alexandra Ordonez, Chantal Say, Paul Tudman]; Arizona State University [Greg Asner, Dave Knapp, Jiwei Li, Yaping Xu, Nick Fabina, Heather D'Angelo]; and National Geographic [Helen Fox, Brianna Bambic, Brian Free, Zoe Lieb] and Great Barrier Reef Foundation [Petra Lundgren, Kirsty Bevan, Sarah Castine]. We owe a debt of gratitude to the host nations of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Global Reef Expedition (https://www.livingoceansfoundation.org/global-reef-expedition/) who provided access and use of their high quality data. We are similarly indebted to the scientists as well as the crew of the M/Y Golden Shadow, through the generosity of HRH Prince Khaled bin Sultan, for painstakingly collecting such invaluable data that enabled the Allen Coral Atlas to map this region. Attributions of contributed field data or maps for the reference sample creation are available at: https://allencoralatlas.org/attribution/