MAPPING TROPICAL CYCLONE DISTURBANCE OF THE GREAT BARRIER REEF.

This paper describes the challenges of mapping cyclone disturbance across vast geographic region of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia. The paper also describes how cartographic visualization can help one understand the implications of these challenges on the quality of the results. GBR forms the largest coral reef system in the world, including nearly 3000 individual reefs that stretch for more than 2000 km along the Queensland coast and cover an area of over 348000 square kilometer. The ability to map cyclone disturbance is limited by a general lack of key data sets, as well as high levels of uncertainty in the data that is available. The article concludes that Mapping cyclone disturbance of the GBR is difficult, However, it is possible to build a predictive model of cyclone disturbance by linking field observations of reef damage from cyclones to hindcast cyclone energy and reef vulnerability measures. Creative use of cartographic visualization is essential.