DEA Coastal Ecosystems

Full description

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Maintenance and Update Frequency: asNeeded

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Purpose
The DEA Coastal Ecosystems product suite maps the extent of coastal ecosystems within Australia’s coastal zone, with a focus on those situated landward of the low-tide boundary. Developed using Sentinel-2 data, the product suite provides an annual 10 m resolution extent classification layer for four ecosystem classes, enabling users to better monitor and understand the distribution of these ecosystems at a continental scale. The classification layer is supported by ecosystem probability layers for each class, to allow a more nuanced interpretation of the modelled ecosystem extents and to provide users flexibilty for tailored mapping approaches. The mapping process employs a machine learning (ML) framework originally developed by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and James Cook University (JCU) for global coastal ecosystem mapping on the Google Earth Engine platform (Murray et al., 2022). To tailor the approach for Australian conditions, JCU — commissioned by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) — compiled a national training dataset of more than 40,000 annotated points across the continent (Canto et al., 2023; Becker et al., 2023). This collaboration ensures the resulting maps are ecologically meaningful and complementary to expert mapping undertaken by State Governments and academia, providing a strong foundation for environmental management and reporting, restoration planning, environmental-economic accounting, and long-term coastal conservation.