Combined Biotope Classification Scheme (CBiCS): A new marine ecological classification scheme to meet new challenges, Part II: Case studies, morphospecies and image scoring (Australian Marine Science Association AMSA Conference 2018)

Summary

The Combined Biotope Classification Scheme (CBiCS) was developed to meet the requirements of environmental decision support and to deal with the volumes of data generated by new sensing technologies. CBiCS integrates the classification of settings and components associated with habitats, biotopes and morphospecies. Part II of this series of presentations describes case study applications of CBiCS to underwater towed video in Victoria which resulted in the classification of hitherto undescribed biotopes.  The Morphospecies Component of the classification scheme is profiled that provides a hierarchical system, language and tools to describe visual biodiversity at near-species level. The system is unique in that it combines both visual morphospecies and taxonomic species, with over 5700 categories catalogued.  The new scheme has yielded many benefits for ecological monitoring and assessment in Victoria. Results are presented for its application to the description and mapping of high diversity deep reef biotopes in Victorian waters.  The hierarchical relationship between morphospecies provided more accurate and responsive multivariate distance measures for monitoring community successions over long periods. The scheme, and its fine resolution, has lead to a machine AI system for scoring large image sets, as obtained from robotic benthic surveys.