About iBenthos

Why we need iBenthos ?

The extent and condition of seagrass meadows around Australia and across nations of the Indo-Pacific is poorly quantified but increasingly recognised as a key asset providing key ecosystem service, including carbon storage and sequestration. Many national and regional organisations and local communities including indigenous ranger groups now routinely undertake seagrass monitoring.

However, lack of appropriate and scalable technologies is a key constraint for comprehensive mapping, monitoring and assessment of seagrass meadows. Remote sensing approaches – including the use of satellites and aerial and submersible drones – show promise but are often limited in optically deep or complex (turbid) waters and require on-site validation to ensure accuracy of mapping products.

IBenthos is a publicly accessible cloud-based software platform that has been developed for users across Australia and Indo-Pacific nations to assist in the mapping and monitoring of the extent, condition and ecosystem services provided by seagrass meadows.

How iBenthos Works

Underwater optical imaging has become an essential tool for studying and managing many aspects of coastal and marine ecosystems, such as enabling the rapid and comprehensive collection of information for mapping benthic habitats like seagrass. Recent advances in the automated image analysis techniques to classify objects of interest (e.g., seagrass) now allow rapid processing of images enabling comprehensive repeatable and timely actionable information that can be scaled to geographic areas of interest.

iBenthos harnesses machine learning (ML) models trained with regionally relevant image datasets to automatically detect seagrass, identify morphotypes and measure percent cover in underwater imagery.

iBenthos supports the analysis of data collected from subtidal diver and drop camera surveys, intertidal surveys, and towed and autonomous vehicles.

A user-friendly interface enables users to upload images and other data from field trips and analyse them to produce key metrics such as seagrass percent cover, composition, biomass, and carbon content. iBenthos also provides tools including map-based exploration, summary reporting tools and is developing AI based agents to automate reporting.

IBenthos enables and encourages the sharing, collaboration and release of datasets. Permissions (with optional user agreements), and mechanisms for the public release of data are also provided. Public datasets are licensed under a Creative Commons “CC BY 4.0” license.

What iBenthos does and doesn’t do

While the name implies a broader application, at present iBenthos is focused on providing an effective workflow for the analysis and mapping of seagrass across Indo-Pacific. With time we envisage adding other key benthic habitats, including corals.

With ML models constantly evolving – as better methods and more comprehensive datasets become available – our aim is to make a number of these models available to users through a consistent workflow and user interface.

In iBenthos we aim to provide some level of analytical capability at both the image and aggregate (for example site) levels. Exports functions and links to API’s are available such as through Google Earth Engine for producing and validating maps.

As the models available in iBenthos can be improved significantly through access to more images to train the models, we encourage users to make their datasets available for this purpose. Making the datasets available for training purposes is not the same as making the dataset available for public access which also encourages improvements in the model. If you are interested in optimising performance for your specific project/location, we encourage you to reach out and discuss your requirements with us.

Note that the models are publicly accessible, and a condition of use is that images uploaded by users may be utilised for model refinement. This ensures continual improvement of model performance.

There are some things iBenthos doesn’t including at present:

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Acknowledgment and acknowledging project

iBenthos was developed by CSIRO with the support of Google LLC and the Australian Government and following extensive surveys of seagrasses with many collaborators both around Australia, including JCU and UQ, and in- country partners across the Indo-Pacific; Indonesia, Thailand Fiji, and Timor Leste.

To cite the project please use the following
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