The first global map of tropical shallow water has been created through joint effort of NASA and NOAA. Nearly 44,000 SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor) scenes collected over five years were processed to 1 sq.km cells by NASA Space Flight Center using algorithms developed by NOAA for water shallower than 20-30 meters. NOAA is working with the UNEP World Consdervation Monitoring Centre to use this data set to improve the database of coral reef locations used in ReefBase.
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The first challenge for global coral reef mapping with Landsat 7 is in getting global data that is not obscured by cloud cover. Global data acquisition for coral reef mapping was initiated through the Landsat 7 Long Term Acquisition Plan (Gasch et al. 2000). Once the instrument began acquiring data over coral reefs, it took several years to get the needed acquisitions because of tropical cloud cover, and to find ways to purchase or trade for the over 1000 scenes necessary to complete the global coverage. The data assembly was led by scientists in the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing at the University of South Florida. A number of groups within NASA provided Landsat scenes, and collaborators in mapping projects around the world shared their data in order to assemble the most complete possible archive of Landsat 7 data. The archive and online data interface has been developed by the SeaWiFS Project at Goddard Spaceflight Center.
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