Abstract
Seagrass meadows play important roles as habitats for many marine organisms, traps for sediment, and buffers against wave actions. The objective of this paper is to map seagrass meadows in the Redfish Bay, Texas from WorldView-2 imagery. Seagrass meadows grow in shallow and clear water areas in the Redfish Bay. The WorldView-2 satellite can acquire multispectral imagery from the bay bottom with 2 m spatial resolution 8 multispectral bands and 0.46 m panchromatic imagery. The top of atmosphere radiance was transformed to the bottom reflectance through the atmospheric correction and the water column correction. The object based image analysis was used to identify seagrass meadows distributions in the Redfish Bay. This investigation demonstrated that seagrass can be identified with 94% accuracy, although seagrass species cannot be satisfactorily recognized. The results implied that the WorldView-2 satellite imagery is a suitable data source for seagrass distribution mapping.
Highlights
Submerged aquatic vegetation habitats such as seagrass communities are among the most productive coastal habitats and are vital to estuarine ecosystems
The objective of this paper is to mapping seagrass meadows in the Redfish Bay from WorldView-2 high spatial resolution imagery with the object based image analysis (OBIA) method
These results indicate that the high resolution satellite imagery is practical for mapping seagrass habitats but not sufficient for identifying species composition
Summary
Submerged aquatic vegetation habitats such as seagrass communities are among the most productive coastal habitats and are vital to estuarine ecosystems. Seagrasses form extensive meadows in shallow coastal environments, where they provide a number of critical ecosystem services, including sediment stabilization and shoreline protection, maintaining water quality, and providing food and habitat for fish and other fauna [1,2,3]. Inventory and monitoring are critical components in seagrass ecosystem management, restoration and protection, and provide key insights into the overall health of estuarine ecosystems. The Ecological Condition of Estuaries in the Gulf of Mexico (EPA 620-R-98-004); U.S Environmental Protection Agency: Washington, DC, USA, 1999.
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