Hochberg, Eric: Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (Project Lead)
Project Funding:
2015 - 2017
NRA: 2014 NASA: HyspIRI Preparatory Airborne Activities and Associated Science: Coral Reef and Volcano Research
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
Coral reefs are vital to the cultural and economic lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. However, many reefs have deteriorated due to local human activities, and the rest may not be able to withstand the added stresses brought by climate change. Predictions are dire, but the underlying data are surprisingly sparse. For the Hawaiian archipelago (from the Big Island to Kure Atoll), no more than 5% of reef area has been quantitatively surveyed in the past 10 years. Further, the data that do exist show patterns that are counter to present understanding of how environment impacts reefs. The HyspIRI Preparatory Airborne Activities bringing high-altitude AVIRIS flights to Hawaii in 2016 is an excellent opportunity to fill the data gap and then to reevaluate the relationships between coral reef condition and the environmental parameters that are thought to be influential. Additionally, since AVIRIS has previously conducted a similar campaign in 2000, there is very good potential to investigate how at least some of Hawaii’s reefs may have changed over a decade and a half. We propose to use the 2016 data to quantify benthic cover and primary productivity for all reefs surveyed by AVIRIS. We will conduct a modest field study in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu for calibration and validation of the remote sensing data and products. We will analyze the remote sensing data products against a suite of biogeophysical parameters readily available from ancillary sources: oceanographic conditions (sea surface temperature, significant wave height, aragonite saturation), reef geomorphology and age (increasing from the Big Island to Kure Atoll), land cover and land-use change, known patterns of biodiversity, and local human threats (pollution, development, overfishing). Pending availability and suitability of the 2000 data set, we will investigate how reef condition has changed over time, as well as how the relationship between reef condition and the environment has changed over time. Results would be important on many levels. Achieving our objectives requires development and implementation of a remote sensing data processing flow that could potentially be modified for use in other optically shallow water systems besides reefs. The maps of reef condition would provide a dense data set of region-scale reef condition, which would be valuable to both scientists in general and Hawaii reef managers in particular. The analysis relating reef condition to environment would produce a set of quantitative, empirical models that can be used to evaluate the roles of specific drivers of current reef condition and forecast reef condition under predicted scenarios of environmental change. Finally, the change analysis, would be (to the best of our knowledge) the first synoptic (as opposed to a limited number of small sites) analysis of coral reef change at the region scale, potentially identifying both broad regional trends and site-specific areas of concern.
Publications:
Bell, T. W., Okin, G. S., Cavanaugh, K. C., Hochberg, E. J. 2020. Impact of water characteristics on the discrimination of benthic cover in and around coral reefs from imaging spectrometer data. Remote Sensing of Environment. 239, 111631. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2019.111631
More details may be found in the following project profile(s):
