Project update | 06 September 2022
Avi Putri Pertiwi presents BiCOME work at World Seagrass Conference
The World Seagrass Conference took place in Annapolis, Maryland, USA between 7-12 August 2022 and attracted scientists and stakeholders from around the world for a series of talks, networking and field trips relating to the key theme of "Signs of Success: Reversing the Course of Degradation" in relation to seagrasses and other submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV).
Avi Putri Pertiwi presented work from BiCOME participants in the session : 4B: Advances in Seagrass and Optical Water Quality Remote Sensing.
Details of her presentation is provided below:
Cloud-native Remotely-sensed Seagrass Mapping and Blue Carbon Estimation in Mozambique
Presenting author: Avi Putri Pertiwi
Co-authors:
Alina Blume, Dimosthenis Traganos, (DLR)
Stefanie Broszeit, Stephen Widdicombe, Thomas Jackson, (PML)
Didier Ramon, François Steinmetz, (HYGEOS)
Victor Martinez-Vicente (PML)
The interest in the blue carbon sequestration has been increasing in the past few years due to their potential in climate change. Despite only covering less than 0.2% of the global seafloor, seagrass meadows store 10% of the world’s atmospheric carbon deep in the soils. The extent of seagrass meadows has been declining at an alarming rate of 1.5%/year on average. Field data collection of the underwater habitats can be costly due to the environmental challenges. Our goal in the Biodiversity of the Coastal Ocean: Monitoring with Earth Observation (BiCOME) project is to develop analysis-ready products that can be used for Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) quantification and downstream impact. In this study, we mapped the seagrass extent and stored blue carbon across the entire Mozambican coastlines. We processed 9,089 multi-temporal Sentinel-2 image tiles across 34,193km2 of the coastal area in Mozambique and mapped the satellite derived bathymetry (SDB) and seagrass extent by using in-situ bathymetry data, and both in-situ and self-annotated habitat data. The seagrass extent was mapped with the Random Forest image classification, resulting in 1,779.3 km2 of seagrass meadows, located between depths of 1.6 and 9.2 m. We estimated the seagrass blue carbon stocks by multiplying the mapped nationwide seagrass extent with their corresponding Tier 1 and Tier 2 carbon stock estimates. Based on our Tier 1 carbon stock assessment, the national seagrass blue carbon stock was estimated at 1.78-147 million Mg and our Tier 2 carbon stock assessment results in 1.64-4.35 million Mg.
You can read more about the event and view the book of abstracts on the ISBW14 website.
The next conference (ISBW15) will take place in Napoli in 2024, follow ISBW14 on Twitter for further updates.