Supporting datasets for estimating reef counts in the Coral Sea and northern Australia (NESP MaC 3.17, AIMS)

This collection contains three supporting datasets created to assist in estimating the number of reefs in the Coral Sea and northern Australia. The 'Analysis-regions' shapefile provides standardised spatial boundaries defining reporting regions across northern Australia and adjacent waters (Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait, Coral Sea, and northern/northwestern coastal areas) used to aggregate and compare reef count statistics. The 'Boundary-regions' shapefile identifies zones where the two sets of independent reef mapping produced in the North and West Australian Tropical Reef Features dataset (https://doi.org/10.26274/XJ4V-2739) can be reliably compared. This is to quantify the distribution of boundary errors that occur from repeat mapping of reefs. The 'Grazing-halos' dataset contains measurements of grazing halo extents around 100 randomly selected lagoonal patch reefs in the Coral Sea, providing empirical data on the zone of reef influence that informs the proximity threshold used to determine when neighbouring reef patches should be treated as a single ecological unit for counting purposes.