This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Anthropogenic stresses to reefs coupled with climate change impacts are causing unprecedented declines in coral reefs globally yet automated technology to monitor the health of coral reefs at large temporal and spatial scales does not exist. This project will develop and deploy automated technology to monitor the health of coral reefs at large temporal and spatial scales. It will create a cyber-enabled Computer Vision Coral Ecology Portal that will allow upload, and expert classification remotely via an interactive web-based server paradigm where the external user need not manage the hardware or software. To achieve this goal new computer vision technology is needed. The effort has the potential to not only advance computer vision technology but also transform the way that coral reef ecology is performed. Fundamental computer vision problems in underwater imaging and illumination modeling, registration of RGB and fluorescence images from a moving camera rig will be addressed. Progressive improvement in the computer vision system combined with new data collected with these enabling technologies, will allow for transformational ecological outcomes including: 1) creation of baselines of coral reef health at diverse locations essential for understanding impacts of climate change; 2) development of rapid methods for quantitative surveying in support of ecology research or management; 3) estimates of growth, mortality, and recruitment rates and competitive abilities of the key coral reef species and the changes associated with warming and acidification; 4) improved knowledge of deep coral reefs for which very little is known; 5) rapid and spatially extensive in situ classification in support work by our collaborators on using airborne and satellite remote sensing and 6) creation of novel methods for multi-spectral image acquisition and processing to improve cyber-based ecological classification of coral reef communities.
The project includes participation and education for undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. The project also includes an interdisciplinary education and out-reach program to involve high school students and teachers, using an innovative web-based "Coral Quiz" that will communicate details of ecology, computer science and the biology of coral reefs.
