Regional High-Resolution Benthic Habitat Data from Planet Dove Imagery for Conservation Decision-Making and Marine Planning

Steven R Schill,Valerie Pietsch Mcnulty,F Joseph Pollock,Ximena Escovar-Fadul,Jiwei Li,David E Knapp,Trevor Mcdonald,Joe D Kington,George T Raber,Gregory P Asner,Fritjof Lüthje

doi:10.3390/rs13214215

Abstract

High-resolution benthic habitat data fill an important knowledge gap for many areas of the world and are essential for strategic marine conservation planning and implementing effective resource management. Many countries lack the resources and capacity to create these products, which has hindered the development of accurate ecological baselines for assessing protection needs for coastal and marine habitats and monitoring change to guide adaptive management actions. The PlanetScope (PS) Dove Classic SmallSat constellation delivers high-resolution imagery (4 m) and near-daily global coverage that facilitates the compilation of a cloud-free and optimal water column image composite of the Caribbean’s nearshore environment. These data were used to develop a first-of-its-kind regional thirteen-class benthic habitat map to 30 m water depth using an object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach. A total of 203,676 km2 of shallow benthic habitat across the Insular Caribbean was mapped, representing 5% coral reef, 43% seagrass, 15% hardbottom, and 37% other habitats. Results from a combined major class accuracy assessment yielded an overall accuracy of 80% with a standard error of less than 1% yielding a confidence interval of 78–82%. Of the total area mapped, 15% of these habitats (31,311.7 km2) are within a marine protected or managed area. This information provides a baseline of ecological data for developing and executing more strategic conservation actions, including implementing more effective marine spatial plans, prioritizing and improving marine protected area design, monitoring condition and change for post-storm damage assessments, and providing more accurate habitat data for ecosystem service models.

Highlights

A custom Lambert equal area projection centered on the Caribbean was used to calculate the area of each benthic habitat class
Many countries and territories across the Caribbean have relied on coarser global-scale marine datasets to inform conservation and management decisions, which are often not appropriate for small-island scale planning. These regional-scale benthic maps fill a data void and provide the first seamless and consistently mapped high-resolution (4 m) spatial database of benthic habitats for the shallow waters of the Insular Caribbean, a place identified as a high global biodiversity area and priority for coral reef protection [67]
Current UNEP-WCMC Global Distribution of Coral Reefs (Version 4.1) [58,68] data estimate 7409 km2 of coral reef habitat throughout the Insular Caribbean compared to the 10,373 km2 total area calculated using the new regional maps

Summary

Introduction

Tropical benthic habitats, such as coral reefs and seagrass, harbor immense biodiversity and are an economic engine of goods and services that benefit the coastal communities that depend on them. Coral reefs provide essential habitat for one-quarter of all known marine species [1], but they provide billions of dollars of economic value and direct benefits to at least 500 million people who live in close proximity to them [2,3]. Seagrass beds provide a wealth of ecosystem services and ecological benefits valued at over

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Conclusion