Remote Sensing of
Coral Reefs
By Josh Foster
http://www.igarss2010.org/CRS/CoralReef.asp
http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/landscape-vulner.html
http://www.noaa.gov/features/economic_0708/coralreefs.html
Distribution of coral reefs around the
World
http://www.coris.noaa.gov
How much detail can remote sensing
provide?
Only suited to coarse and intermediate habitat
discrimination
Not suited to detailed mapping, aerial photography
consistently more accurate
Satellite imagery getting better; CASI can have accuracies
of 81%, a little more than double any other satellite
http://www.pcrf.org/remotesensing.php
Accuracy values after processing
images of coral reef habitat
http://www.unesco.org/csi/pub/source/rs12.htm
http://spie.org/x24073.xml
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=3342
An example of coral bleaching as
seen from space.
Taken from IKONOS satellite imagery with 4m
resolution.
Future Landsat research offers more promise.
Landsat 8 launched last year has better blue band and
coastal band.
Articles
Mumby,P.J. et al. (1997). Coral reef habitat mapping: how much detail can remote sensing
provide? Marine Biology, 130, 193-202.
Mumby, P.J. and Edwards, A.J. (2002). Mapping marine environments with IKONOS imagery:
enhanced spatial resolution can deliver greater thematic accuracy. Remote Sensing of
Environment, 82, 248-257.
Andrefouet S. and Riegl B. (2004). Remote Sensing: a key tool for interdisciplinary assessment
of coral reef processes. Coral Reefs, 23, 1-4.
H. El-Askary, S. H. Abd El-Mawla, J. Li, M. M. El-Hattab & M. El-Raey (2014). Change
detection of coral reef habitat using Landsat-5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI data in
the Red Sea (Hurghada, Egypt), International Journal of Remote Sensing, 35:6, 2327-2346