CNMI-Guam: Saipan Island (and Marpi Bank)

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PIBHMC’s first attempt at a benthic habitat map. Delineates sand vs. non-sand habitats, and displays percent coral cover in non-sand habitats.

Location: Saipan’s western anchorage.

The yellow/red color-coding represents percent coral cover on the reef. Purple areas indicate sand substrate, and therefore 0% coral cover. Percent coverage values were derived by kriging the classified Optical Validation (video) data.

The underlying base layers are hillshading derived from multibeam bathymetry on top of NOAA nautical charts.

Sampling Scheme

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Map of all Optical Validation tracks conducted at Saipan, CNMI, by the Pacific Islands Benthic Habitat Mapping Center (NOAA-CRED-PIBHMC), accompanied by representative frame-grabs from the collected video footage. These frame-grabs were classified every 20m.

The 2003 tracks are colored in black and the 2004 tracks are colored in red.

The underlying base layers are multibeam bathymetry (color-coded by depth) on top of NOAA nautical charts.