Seafloor brightness map of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, derived from biodiversity data.

A simple map of seafloor brightness based on an integrated analysis of biodiversity data for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia, is presented. Biodiversity data were analyzed to derive optically "light" and "dark" bottom categories, interpolated and mapped. The seafloor brightness map was developed primarily as an input parameter for a remote sensing Shallow Water Inversion Model (SWIM) to account for the impact of bottom reflectance effects on inherent optical property (IOP) retrievals. The map, in conjunction with spectral reflectance signatures of both "light" and "dark" classes, provides the user with an approximate spatially explicit bottom reflectance parameter that can be used to correct IOP retrievals for the effect of bottom reflectance contamination. The map can be adjusted if additional optical cover datasets become available, or local spectral reflectance signatures are available to the user, making it highly adaptable and suitable for regional and local model testing. For the research community, SWIM has been implemented in SeaDAS.