Spatial data as a baseline for managing coastal seagrasses in Queensland, Australia

Queensland’s coasts have significant and diverse tropical seagrass habitats that we have mapped and researched. This includes the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBR) with ~35 000 km2 and Torres Strait with ~15 000 km2 of seagrass ecosystem. Programs have documented these seagrasses since the 1980s and early 2000s respectively including: (1) GBR-wide coastal seagrass mapping (1980s-1990s); (2) seabed biodiversity mapping (2004-2005); (3) mapping marine environments in Queensland’s shipping lanes and ports (2002-2014); (4) long-term (>15 years) mapping at Cairns, Thursday Island, Townsville, Abbot Point and Gladstone ports. Until recently managers could not access the full suite of seagrass spatial data in a format that included a range of spatial scales, site and meadow information; nor could they interrogate the reliability and age of the data available. We evaluated and incorporated over 300 seagrass spatial data sets (seagrass presence/absence, species present, dominant species, meadow area and survey date) and more than 60,000 data points spanning the 30 years into a publicly available set of GIS layers. This tool allows coastal managers and scientists to reliability interrogate seagrass data in these areas for management decision making. This data also provides a valuable benchmark; providing a long-term snapshot of seagrass meadow status and a base for modelling meadow response to spatial/temporal impacts. We look at a recent climate related ecological event in northern Australia and make a case for using our spatial approach and to advocate for improving both the reliability and availability of seagrass data.