3D Maps of Coral Reefs
Maria has been test-driving a protocol to produce 3-D maps of coral reefs. She goes to Lizard Island in the Great Barrier Reef every year to collaborate with Andrew Baird, Sean Connolly and Josh Madin in studying coral demographics. During this year’s trip, Maria and Andrew helped Oscar Pizarro manoeuvre a stereo-camera across the reef, taking thousands of photographs of the reef bottom. The photos were then overlapped to produce 3-D mosaics of the reef:
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These mosaics were a (very successful!) pilot study for bigger maps that Maria hopes to do in the near future. She hopes to use these maps to quantify patterns of spatial distributions of reef coral species.
Where an organism lives affects the environmental conditions it is exposed to, and which other organisms it interacts with. Therefore, species spatial distributions are extremely relevant for species coexistence, and ultimately biodiversity.