River Eelgrass Detection using Very High-Resolution Satellite Imagery

Abstract

<p>River eelgrass has a vital role in the coastal ecosystem, which can be threatened by human activities and climate change. Accurate mapping of eelgrass habitats is important for sustainable eelgrass conservation and management. A large portion of the Shediac river in the province of New Brunswick, Canada is covered by eelgrass, which can be threatened by different natural and anthropogenic activities, such as bridge construction. Thus, mapping and monitoring eelgrass in this river are of interest to the province. In this study, a very high-resolution Worldview-3 image along with an Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique (ISODATA) unsupervised classification algorithm was applied to map eelgrass over a portion of Shediac river. The results indicated a reasonable classification accuracy, and it was observed that 90,416.43 m2 of the study area was covered by river eelgrass. © 2022 IEEE.</p>