Mapping shallow-water coral reef habitats with Sentinel-2 imagery
Practice passage · Coral reef remote sensing
Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by climate change and coastal development. Satellite remote sensing provides an efficient way to monitor these ecosystems over large areas.
This study evaluated the use of Sentinel-2 imagery for mapping shallow-water benthic habitats around a tropical reef. After atmospheric and water-column corrections, a random forest classifier was used to distinguish live coral, seagrass, sand, and rubble. Field observations were used to validate the classification results.
The overall accuracy reached 82%, although live coral was sometimes confused with seagrass. These findings demonstrate the potential of multispectral satellite imagery for regional coral reef monitoring, while spectral similarity and water depth remain important challenges.