Coral reefs and seagrass habitats are of great importance for local communities living close to them. They provide coastal protection, biodiversity, food resource and nursery ground. In comparison to terrestrial vegetation they are commonly submerged making them challenging to map due to varying water depth and water clarity.
The aim of this presentation is to demonstrate how object-based analysis of these environments has been applied to differentiate between submerged mapping categories over small and large spatial scale and for multi-temporal analysis. The applications presented use a variety of multi-spectral moderate and high spatial resolution satellite imagery, with physical attributes and detailed field data. Seagrass species, abundance and biomass has been mapped using supervised object-based classification annually for the Eastern Banks Moreton Bay Australia over a 12 year period. Further application will be demonstrated using an hierarchical object attribute based mapping approach applied semi-automatically to map over 250 large reef systems.
TOPICS COVERED INCLUDE:
- How eCognition OBIA analysis of these environments has been applied
- Mapping changes in coral reef composision
- Using an hierarchical object attribute based mapping approach