The Philippines has long lacked baseline coastal ecosystem data, prompting NAMRIA, the country’s central mapping agency to launch the Coastal Resource Mapping and Assessment (CRMA) project in 2012. Now on its 3rd cycle, the project maps coastal and marine resources using remote sensing and GIS, complemented by field validation surveys with a five-year update cycle. Corals and seagrass are assessed through PLIT and Quadrat methods, while identifying the dominant species.
CRMA has documented 1.257 million hectares of corals, 498,341 hectares of seagrass/seaweeds, and 311,400 hectares of mangrove forests. Coral cover averages 30.9% across 67 genera, primarily Porites, while seagrass cover reaches 47.25% across 13 species dominated by Thalassia hemprichii. Outputs will be uploaded to the Geoportal Philippines, providing open access datasets that support policy-making, conservation planning and resource management.
In response to stakeholders’ demand for more timely coastal resource data, NAMRIA proposed the “Enhance Coastal Resource Mapping and Assessment Project” to the Government of Australia through the Marine Research Initiative (MRI), aiming to reduce the update cycle from five to two years by integrating Artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling more responsive monitoring of coastal resources.