ReefCloud public data (Central Great Barrier Reef and American Samoa use cases)

Updated: 2026-07-01

What is this dataset? This repository is associated with the paper Predicting coral cover trends from local to broad spatial scales by Vercelloni et al. (2026). It provides the dataset needed to reproduce use cases presented in the paper. Reproducible codes of the results are available at: GitHub repository. What is used for? The dataset associated with the repository inform a broad spatial-scale predictive model, which predict annual hard coral cover across all known coral reefs (both monitored and unmonitored) in the Central region of the Great Barrier Reef and American Samoa by incorporating a spatial grid and information about the exposure to heat stress and tropical cyclones. How it was created? The predictive model uses coral cover data aggregated into 5×5km hexagonal units. Individual monitoring observations from the public ReefCloud platform within the same spatial unit and depths of 2-10 metres are aggregated.