Time series of mosaics

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Mosaics are excellent tools for monitoring an area over time. They can capture changes at both large and small scales simultaneously. This page illustrates a few applications of mosaics for tracking changes relevant to coral reef applications. (An aside on browser compatibility: Zoomify has some quriks showing multiple images on a page, as done here. If the boxes below are blank, try clicking or scrolling within them; images should appear.)

1. Bleaching at Cheeca Rocks

Derek Manzello's group at AOML has assembled a remarkable time series of mosaics, consisting of at least annual visits to six 100 x 100m plots at Cheeca Rocks, FL, starting in 2012. Brooke Gintert and I helped them get the first few years of data (2012-2016 visible here). The images shown above are from transect 4 of that dataset, covering the 2014 and 2015 bleaching events and the winter in between. By zooming and panning through these images you can see the power of mosaics to "fate track" individual coral colonies. Gintert et al. (2018) presented more details on these data. Note: the full-screen function of Zoomify does not seem to work very well when there are multiple viewers on a page (as here). To see this comparison in full screen, click through here.

2. Hurricane damage, recovery, and mortality at Molasses Reef

Dana Willimas has been monitoring Acropora palmata in the Florida Keys for many years. This is a time series from her site "ML-3" at Molasses Reef. Images are available from 2005, 2006, 2012, 2014 and 2017. ML-3 is a great example of fortuitously capturing unexpected events in mosaics. Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma passed over this site between the 2005 and 2006 image sets, resulting not only in the expected fragementation of the A. palmata branches, but also in large-scale slumping of almost 30 m^3 of material from the side of the spur on which these corals were growing. Look near the top center of these images for the big change. Gleason et al. (2007) presented more details on this event. Recovery of these corals was evident in substantial growth from 2006-2012 and, to a lesser extent, from 2012-2014. The back-to-back regional bleaching events in 2014, 2015 and hurricane Irma in 2017 decimated this site, however, with only a few small fragements remaining in 2017. Note: the full-screen function of Zoomify does not seem to work very well when there are multiple viewers on a page (as here). To see this comparison in full screen, click through here.

3. Demise of elkhorn coral at Horseshoe Reef

Horseshoe reef, until recently, was the site of one of the largest extant stands of Acropora palmata in the Florida Keys. Our mosaic of this site from 2009 (left) shows the extent of this thicket. Much like Molassess Reef, the A. palmata at Horseshoe Reef suffered following back-to-back regional bleaching events in 2014, 2015 and hurricane Irma in 2017. The mosaic from 2017 (right) shows dramatic changes relative to 2009. Note: the full-screen function of Zoomify does not seem to work very well when there are multiple viewers on a page (as here). To see this comparison in full screen, click through here.