Fig. 1.

The workflow for generating the global dataset of coral reef imagery and associated data. The 860 photographic surveys from the Western Atlantic Ocean, Southeast Asia, Central Pacific Ocean, Central Indian Ocean, and Eastern Australia, were conducted between 2012 and 2018. Reef locations are represented by points colour-coded according to the survey region. Surveys images were post-processed in order to transform raw fish-eye images into 1 × 1 m quadrats for manual and automated annotation (inset originally published in González-Rivero et al.²³ as Figure S1). For the image analysis, nine networks were trained. For each network, images were divided in two groups: Training and Testing images. Both sets were manually annotated to create a training dataset and verification dataset. The training dataset was used to train and fine-tune the network. The fully trained network was then used to classify the test images, and contrast the outcomes (Machine) against the human annotations (Observer) in the test dataset during the validation process. Finally, the non-annotated images (photo-quadrats) were automatically annotated using the validated network. The automated classifications were processed to originate the benthic covers that constitute this dataset. QGIS software was used to generate the map using the layer “Countries WGS84” downloaded from ArcGIS Hub (http://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/UIA::countries-wgs84).