The Allen Coral Atlas and The Nature Conservancy offer a 4-part live mentored course covering the three lessons of Remote Sensing and Mapping for Coral Reef Conservation Online Course during the month of March! This will include a weekly instructive webinar series to provide guidance on the course, supplemental material, and participant questions forum. Create a  free login and register here.

You can also take the course self-guided at any time at the Reef Resilience Network.

The Remote Sensing and Mapping for Coral Reef Conservation Mentored Online Course is designed to help marine managers, conservation practitioners, scientists, decision makers, and GIS professionals explore how remote sensing and mapping technologies can inform their conservation work and understand which tools are best suited to their needs. It features self-paced lessons, webinars, online discussion on the Reef Resilience Network Forum, and direct access to leading coral reef mapping experts.

In this course, users will learn key concepts of remote sensing and reef mapping, and their applications for marine conservation. Users will explore the Allen Coral Atlas, a powerful new tool providing access to high-resolution maps of the world’s coral reef habitats, as well as other new technologies to map and monitor coral reefs. Participants will be able to download a Certificate of Completion at the end of the course.
 
The course features 3 lessons: 

• Lesson 1: Introduction to Remote Sensing and Coral Reef Mapping
• Lesson 2: Using the Allen Coral Atlas
• Lesson 3: Multi-Scale Mapping of Coral Reefs in the Caribbean

Important Dates:   

• February 9: Course registration is open. Registration closes March 3.
• March 2: Webinar 1 - Course begins with an orientation webinar (1 hour)
• March 9: Webinar 2 - Introduction to Remote Sensing and Coral Reef Mapping - Discussion of concepts with course mentors (1 hour)
• March 16: Webinar 3 - Using the Allen Coral Atlas - Discussion of concepts with course mentors (1 hour)
• March 23: Webinar 4 - Multi-Scale Mapping of Coral Reefs in the Caribbean and Course Conclusion - Discussion of concepts with course mentors (1 hour)

Overview: The Allen Coral Atlas partnership is developing cutting-edge technology to, for the first time, create an accurate global mosaic view of coral reefs from high resolution and frequent satellite images of reefs. As the Atlas develops maps of benthic habitat and reef geomorphology regionally and then globally, the field engagement component seeks to identify sources for calibration/validation data and also enable users of the Atlas to achieve conservation results (e.g., through marine spatial planning, restoration, coastal monitoring, and better management). The Atlas is funded primarily by Vulcan Inc. (founded by the late Paul G. Allen); partners include Planet Labs, Arizona State University’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, the National Geographic Society, and the University of Queensland’s Remote Sensing Research Center (RSRC).