Starting in the early 1980s, thirty-two permanent photographed sites were established by AIMS to learn about the dynamic behavior of coral communities in the full variety of reef-zones from sheltered nearshore reefs in turbid waters through to the slopes and surf zones of outer reefs, each of which has its own distinctive assemblage of corals. With allied field studies, it was established that in the last two decades of the 20th Century, GBR coral communities exhibited substantial resilience (in terms of restoration of prior percent cover and composition) following disturbances such as floods, crown-of-thorns starfish and cyclone-generated waves. There is presently little basis for setting resilience targets for coral reefs, especially in relation to the great variety of environmental settings and reef-types within the Great Barrier Reef. This project will help scientists provide a much stronger evidence base for the setting of targets and evaluating contemporaneous changes compared to more benign years of late last century.

5 sites at between 2 and 12m depth were established in 1981 at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, 30 km off the north Queensland coast. Images were taken at all sites on an annual basis, regularly from 1981 to 2007. Each site is represented by 30–36 1m2 images taken in a grid pattern, Specific years and image file names can be found in the Lizard File Index.xlsx attached below.

The data from one of the 5 sites at Lizard Island was published by Wakeford et al. (2008), which included the application of a cellular automata model of CR Johns to investigate effects of inter-specific competition