The
stats are daunting. The Great Barrier Reef is 2,300 kilometers long, comprises 2,900 individual coral reefs, and covers an area greater than 344,000 square km, making it the world's largest living organism and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A team of researchers from
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, is monitoring the reef, located off the coast of northeastern Australia, for signs of degradation such as the bleaching caused by a variety of environmental pressures including industrial activity and global warming.
The team, led by
Felipe Gonzalez, an associate professor at QUT, is collaborating with the
Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), an organization that has been monitoring the health of the reef for many years. AIMS employs aircraft, in-water surveys, and NASA satellite imagery to collect data on a particular reef's condition. But these methods have drawbacks, including the relatively low resolution of satellite images and high cost of operating fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
So Gonzalez is using an off-the-shelf drone modified to carry both a high-resolution digital camera and a hyperspectral camera. The monitoring is conducted from a boat patrolling the waters 15 to 70 km from the coast. The drone flies 60 meters above the reef, and the hyperspectral camera captures reef data up to three meters below the water’s surface. This has greatly expanded the area of coverage and is helping to verify AIMS's findings.