An update on the remote sensing applications for sustainable coastal management

Abstract

Sea surface salinity, sea surface temperature and oil spills in coastal zone observations are significant geophysical parameters in the Earth’s weather and climate system. These are critical for understanding dispersion and biogeochemical interaction between marine and land ecosystems. Coastal habitats such as wetlands, mangroves, seagrass beds, salt marshes, estuaries, coral reefs and sand beaches provide invaluable benefits to marine life and humans. Natural calamities such as tropical cyclones, coastal flooding and turbidity impact coastal ecosystems. Anthropogenic activities like aquaculture, infrastructure development, tourism services and ship mooring severely affect coastal habitats. The restoration and conservation of these coastal habitats are essential to achieve sustainable coastal management to protect natural resources and the global environment. Traditional methods of sampling and monitoring the marine habitats have various limitations as they are very costly and time-consuming as well as have less spatial coverage making it impossible to investigate the whole ecosystem. With the advancement of earth observation capabilities in recent decades, remote sensing technology has expanded to include a wide range of issues including biophysical parameter inversion and ecosystem process characterization. Remote sensing technology has been extensively utilized to map the coastline and it has the potential to update maps continuously. So, this study provides a comprehensive update on the remote sensing technologies that have been providing immense services to monitor and analyze coastal habitat changes.