[Coral-List] Reef Area database assistance

[Tyler]

Tom,

If you're unable to find a database covering the areas you need and existing
remote sensing methods for determining reef areas are inadequate, I suggest
setting up the digitization of approximate reef area as a series of
mechanical turk "HITs". www.mturk.com Amazon has fairly extensive guides on
setting up tasks, and using the google maps API and some javascript you
should be able to get as acurate data as using google earth.

The issue then comes down to developing some sort of training for random
mechanical turk users.  Still, if it comes down to spending months on
measuring reef area, by yourself, mechanical turk (or other such services,
if they exist) may be a viable alternative.

-Tyler



On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:53 PM, Tom Brewer <tomdbrewer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Coral-Listers,
>
> I am currently constructing a database covering reef ecology across the
> Pacific. As part of an analysis I am performing, I need a rough measure of
> reef area. The scale is from nation to atoll. To date, the best and
> cheapest
> I have found is manually tracing polygons on google earth, which is not
> precise, but adequate for my purposes.
>
> However, there are potentially thousands of these measurements to make,
> which could take half of my PhD. I have looked on reef check, millennium
> mapping and UNEP amongst others, to no avail. If anyone knows of a reef
> area
> database with values (km2) rather than maps, your help would be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Regards
>
> Tom
>
> --
> ______________________________
>
> Tom Brewer
> Ph. D Candidate
> ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
> James Cook University
> Townsville 4811
> Australia
> Mob: +61 433 976 561
> _
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>