TITLE:
Application of Remote Sensing in Coral Reef Mapping and Assessment of Climatic and Environmental Conditions
AUTHORS:
Amina Said, Mark Boitt, Michael Hahn
KEYWORDS:
Coral Reef, DII, SST, C2RCC, Water Quality
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.12 No.11,
November
29,
2024
ABSTRACT: Coral reefs have tremendous benefits to both humans and marine biodiversity but are globally endangered. Traditionally, data collection of coral reefs was fieldwork based, which is time-consuming, costly and lacking in full coverage. This study shows that optical imageries can be utilised to map coral reefs, by fusing visible bands and depth invariant index (DII) to classify benthic features. Overall accuracy of at least 68 percent is achieved. However, to overcome the challenge of cloud cover, which is common in coastal areas, microwave imagery is used to map the emergent coral reefs. Again, remote sensing proves to be reliable in estimation of sea surface temperature (SST) and extraction of water quality parameters through Case-2 Region CoastColour (C2RCC) processor. Thereafter, regression analysis is performed to evaluate the correlation of SST and water quality. It is concluded that higher spatial resolution can improve coral mapping and that there is a need for more research on correlation to its environment.