Summary

Description

This project is a cooperative effort between the National Ocean Service, Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment, the state of Florida, Analytical Laboratories of Hawaii, LLC., the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and NOVA Southeastern University, National Coral Reef Institute. The goal of the effort is to use NOAA-developed mapping methods to produce shallow-water (<30 m) benthic habitat maps of southern Florida. The maps are generated by visual interpretation of georeferenced IKONOS and WorldView-2 satellite imagery. The underwater video clips and still images are collected to either perform ground validation (GV) of seafloor habitat features during visual interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery and map preparation or independently assess the accuracy (AA) of the habitat map.