Moving to 3D: relationships between coral planar area, surface area and volume

PeerJ

article

Jenny E. House¹  Viviana Brambilla¹  Luc M. Bidaut²  Alec P. Christie¹  Oscar Pizarro⁴  Joshua S. Madin⁵  Maria Dornelas¹ 

[1] Center for Biological Diversity, Scottish Oceans Institute, School of Biology, University of St Andrews;Clinical Research Imaging Facility, University of Dundee;College of Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln;Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney;Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa;Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University

关键词: Coral reef;    Scleractinia;    Morphology;    Scaling;    Growth form;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.4280

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Coral reefs are a valuable and vulnerable marine ecosystem. The structure of coral reefs influences their health and ability to fulfill ecosystem functions and services. However, monitoring reef corals largely relies on 1D or 2D estimates of coral cover and abundance that overlook change in ecologically significant aspects of the reefs because they do not incorporate vertical or volumetric information. This study explores the relationship between 2D and 3D metrics of coral size. We show that surface area and volume scale consistently with planar area, albeit with morphotype specific conversion parameters. We use a photogrammetric approach using open-source software to estimate the ability of photogrammetry to provide measurement estimates of corals in 3D. Technological developments have made photogrammetry a valid and practical technique for studying coral reefs. We anticipate that these techniques for moving coral research from 2D into 3D will facilitate answering ecological questions by incorporating the 3rd dimension into monitoring.

【 授权许可】

CC BY