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Determining seagrass abundance in southern New England waters using high resolution remotely sensed imagery
Citation:
Keith, D., P. Colarusso, AND M. Tedesco. Determining seagrass abundance in southern New England waters using high resolution remotely sensed imagery. ORD-R1-R2 RARE Project Kickoff Meeting, Narragansett, Rhode Island, February 28, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this project is to determine if satellite remote sensing can be used in southern New England waters to estimate seagrass distribution, abundance (biomass), and primary production. This level of detail has not been attainable by other remote sensing techniques used for seagrass surveys, such as aerial photography or hydroacoustic sensors (i.e., sidescan sonar). Natural resource managers value this detailed information as it provides insight to the relative health of the seagrass meadows.
Description:
Advances in understanding the optics of shallow water environments, submerged vegetation canopies and seagrass physiology, combined with improved spatial resolution of remote sensing platforms, now enable eelgrass ecosystems to be monitored at a variety of time scales from earth-orbiting platforms such as Landsat-8 (L-8), WorldView-2 (WV2), and WorldView-3 (WV3). This demonstration project will develop tools for extracting eelgrass distribution and biomass in estuaries of southern New England and forecast primary production from satellite imagery.