Shay Viehman

2021

2022

Coral restoration planning is underway in more and more US coral reef jurisdictions. Monitoring coral reef restoration is critical to capture quantitative data to evaluate restoration progress towards success and enable mid-course corrections as needed. Restorations can use many different metrics of success in relation to the restoration goal (CRC Restoration Monitoring Guide, Goergen et al 2020). Photogrammetry (e.g., large-area-imaging, Structure From Motion, photomosaics), is a field data collection method increasingly used in to collect benthic images of coral reef habitats (e.g., CRC Photomosaics webinar). Many of the benthic metrics, such as coral cover, species size distribution, and structural complexity can be analyzed using images. However, this is a largely research-focused data collection method that is only beginning to be ported to large-scale operations (see CRF and Fragments of Hope as examples), and little guidance exists for how to actually make it happen. There are currently many different approaches for data collection and many more for analyses. This project will create a guide to using photogrammetry in coral restoration monitoring and evaluation. It will relate CRC Monitoring Guide metrics to photogrammetry data collection and analyses. Staff on the project will collaborate with leaders in the field of photogrammetry in academia and in NOAA in order to ensure representation for different habitats, reef-types, and basins.

The expected outcomes of this project will be to: 1) enable more restoration practitioners, managers, and other potential users to understand how to use photogrammetry to monitor benthic coral populations and communities for coral restoration,2) list and describe different options for analyzing metrics for coral restoration with photogrammetry,3) lower the conceptual barrier to entry for applying photogrammetry to restoration monitoring, and make this technique more doable.

• Global

Restoration

Completed

https://www.coris.noaa.gov/search/rest/find/document?searchText=projectNumber%3A31372%20OR%20projectTitle%3A"Develop%20Guide%20to%20Image-based%20Monitoring%20for%20Restoration"&start=1&max=10&f=searchPage