Feb 10th 2002:

UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, under agreement with the United Kingdom Hydrographics Office (UKHO), is testing the concept of using the UKHO ARCS Charts to extract coral information. The process involves analysis of the maps to extract coral distribution information from the detailed charts which have been scanned and georeferenced by the UKHO and supplied by Intelliscan.

UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre currently holds a dataset of Coral Reefs which was used in the World Atlas of Coral Reefs as well as many other publications within the Centre. This dataset is derived from multiple sources to give an overview of the global distribution of Coral Reefs. The UKHO data is to be added to this dataset to obtain a definitive distribution of Coral Reefs. More information about the work of UNEP-WCMC can be found at http://www.unep-wcmc.org.

The UKHO dataset will also help to support the work of the International Coral Reef Action Network (ICRAN) which are working to protect Coral Reefs globally. More information about ICRAN can be found at http://www.icran.org.