Reef Cover Classification (version 1) document contains seventeen intra-reef geomorphic Reef Cover descriptors, developed for shallow-water tropical coral reef habitat mapping. Reef Cover describes spatially explicit zonal reef features that can be applied in different academic disciplines (e.g. geography, ecology, oceanography, marine sciences, marine policy and planning) as a geographical reference (e.g. to support political decision making or scientific research). The categorization is designed to be simple and inclusive in order to support broad-scale comparisons between reef ecosystems to for coral reef research at regional to global scales, and to both guide development and aid interpretation of global coral reef geomorphic maps.

For full methodology please refer to Kennedy EV, Roelfsema, C, Lyons M, Kovacs, E, Borrego-Acevedo R, Roe M, Phinn S, Murray N, Larsen K, Wolff J, Yuwono D, Tudman P. 2021. Reef Cover: a coral reef classification for global habitat mapping from remote sensing. Scientific Data. (Scientific Data manuscript number: SDATA-20-00769A-Z).