EMODnet product catalogue
Shallow Depth - St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands National Park and Virgin Islands Reef National Monument - Habitat map (2009)
Benthic habitats of the shallow-water marine environment around St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands were mapped by NOAA using visual interpretation of acoustic imagery. This work replaces previous NOAA maps generated by Kendall et al. (2001) (1) for the waters around St. John. Overall, NOAA mapped 53.4 km2 of shallow-water habitats around St. John for the National Park Service's Inventory and Monitoring Program. Sand and pavement dominated the shallow-water habitats around St. John, covering 43 percent and 16 percent of the mapped area, respectively. Turf, fleshy, coralline, or filamentous algae were pervasive in both the shallow and moderate depth areas, accounting for 74 percent and 92.8 percent of these mapped areas, respectively. Only 17 percent of the shallow area and four percent of the moderate depth area had live hard and soft coral covers greater than 10 percent. NOAA assessed the thematic accuracy of thes map using independent data sets. This map was also reviewed and edited by local experts, including the National Park Service, before being finalized. The associated moderate-depth benthic habitat map (GUI:VI004003) also poduced by NOAA for the region begins at the optical limit of the shallow-water map, and continues to the edge of the acoustic imagery. The integration of these two maps is possible, given that the same general habitat classification schemes and minimum mapping units were applied to both the shallow-water and moderate-depth maps. That being said, NOAA emphasizes that the differences between the two maps must be thoroughly understood, in order to recognize the limitations associated with using the maps in an integrated fashion. Integration of the shallow-water and moderate-depth maps will provide a seamless benthic habitat map, extending from the shoreline of St. John southward to the 55 m isobath. Both maps are found at https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/project/benthic-habitat-mapping-st-john-u-s-virgin-islands-national-park-reef-national-monument/.(1) Kendall, M.S., C.R. Kruer, K.R. Buja, J.D. Christensen, M. Finkbeiner, R.A. Warner and M.E. Monaco. 2001. Methods Used to Map the Benthic Habitats of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. NOAA Technical Memorandum NOS NCCOS CCMA 152. Silver Spring, MD
Simple
- Alternate title
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VI004004
- Date (Creation)
- 2009-08-01
- Citation identifier
- 3f9006f2-8056-44d9-9be3-24ce8cb14488
- Point of contact
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
tim.battista@noaa.gov or bryan.costa@noaa.gov or nos.info@noaa.gov
Owner
- Access constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- no limitations to public access
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
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Source: Kendall, M.S.1, M.E. Monaco , K.R. Buja1 , J.D. Christensen, C.R. Kruer, and M. Finkbeiner, R.A. Warner. 2001. (On-line). Methods Used to Map the Benthic Habitats of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands URL: http://biogeo.nos.noaa.gov/projects/mapping/caribbean/startup.htm. Also available on U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Ocean Service, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Biogeography Program. 2001. (CD-ROM). Benthic Habitats of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Silver Spring, MD: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 1. NOAA National Ocean Service, Biogeography Team; N/SCI 1, SSMC4; 1305 East West Highway; Silver Spring, MD 20910 2. P.O. Box 753; Sheridan, MT 59749 3. NOAA Coastal Services Center, 2234 South Hobson Avenue; Charleston, SC 29405
- Spatial representation type
- Vector
- Denominator
- 10000
- Language
- English
- Topic category
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- Biota
- Oceans
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- Begin date
- 2004-02-18
- Reference system identifier
- http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/3857
- Distribution format
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Name Version ESRI Shapefile
1
GML
3.2.1
- OnLine resource
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Protocol Linkage Name OGC:WMS
https://ows.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/geoserver/emodnet_view_maplibrary/wms vi004004
OGC:WFS
https://ows.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/geoserver/emodnet_open_maplibrary/wfs vi004004
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
https://files.emodnet-seabedhabitats.eu/data/EMODnetSBHsurvey_VI004004.zip EMODnet Seabed Habitats Static Download
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Explanation
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This data set is conformant with the INSPIRE Implementing Rules for the interoperability of spatial data sets and services
- Pass
- Yes
- Statement
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The benthic habitat map of the shallow-water marine environment of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands was created by visual interpretation of remotely sensed imagery. Overhead imagery, including color orthophotography and IKONOS satellite imagery, proved to be an excellent source from which to visually interpret the location, extent and attributes of marine habitats. NOAA scientists were able to accurately and reliably delineate the boundaries of features on digital imagery using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and field investigations. The St. John habitat classification scheme defined benthic communities on the basis of four primary coral reef ecosystem attributes: 1) broad geographic zone, 2) geomorphological structure type, 3) dominant biological cover, and 4) degree of live coral cover. A hierarchical structure of describing features at varying levels of detail was used so that numerous detailed habitats are encompassed by more broadly defined habitat classes. This hierarchy provides users with the ability to expand and collapse the detail of the habitat map to suit their needs Every feature in the benthic habitat map was assigned a designation at each level of the scheme. The ability to apply any component of this scheme was dependent on being able to identify and delineate a given feature in remotely sensed imagery. An area of 53 square km was described by polygons corresponding to the categories described by the habitat classification scheme. Thematic accuracy was characterized for major and detailed geomorphological structure, major and detailed biological cover, and percent coral cover. The accuracy assessment revealed successful overall map accuracies of over 90% for major structure and cover classes, and over 80% for detailed structure and cover classes. For publication to EMODnet, SAERI downloaded the data from https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/project/benthic-habitat-mapping-st-john-u-s-virgin-islands-national-park-reef-national-monument/, reprojected the published shapefile to EPSG:4326 - WGS 84 coordinate system, cleaned the data using mapshaper.org ( https://mapshaper.org/) to eliminate gaps and overlaps, and processed the structure to fit specific data exchange format in QGIS v3.28.4. During data processing, SAERI combined all habitat information together for each polygon. NOAA used a habitat classification scheme that defines benthic habitats based on four primary coral reef ecosystem attributes: 1) broad geographic zone, 2) geomorphological structure, 3) dominant biological cover, and 4) amount of live coral cover. For the purposes of the data exchange format, SAERI combined all categories into the original habitat field. As such, original habitat should be interpreted as "Zone--M_Struct (Geomorphological Structure Types)--D_Struct (Detailed Structure Class)--P_Hard (Percent Cover of Detailed Class Structure)--M_Cover (Biological Cover Class)--P_Cover (Biological Percent Cover)--P_Coral (Percent Live Coral Cover)". In the case of 2 features (POLYGON 1936), both represented the same spatial area but contained different habitat information. Based on this, SAERI maintained both as separate features with the same ID name and treated them as overlapping habitats. Habitat information was provided in the following format: Zone--Maj_Struct (Geomorphological Structure Types)--Det_Struct (Detailed Structure Class)--Maj_Cover (Biological Cover Class)--P_Maj_Cov (Biological Percent Cover)--P_Coral_Cv (Percent Live Coral Cover)
Metadata
- File identifier
- 3f9006f2-8056-44d9-9be3-24ce8cb14488 XML
- Metadata language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2023-10-30T14:43:36.893Z
- Metadata author
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Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role South Atlantic Environmental and Research Institue (SAERI)
Point of contact
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