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Abstract
Topobathymetric lidar is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for benthic habitat mapping, enabling safe, efficient data acquisition over coral reefs and other fragile ecosystems. In 2014, a novel topobathymetric lidar system, the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar-B (EAARL-B), was used to acquire data in priority habitat areas in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), spanning the 0–44-m depth range. In this study, new algorithms and procedures were developed for generating seafloor relative reflectance, along with a suite of shape-based waveform features from EAARL-B. Waveform features were then correlated with percent cover of coral morphologies, domed and branched, and total cover of hard and soft corals. Results show that the EAARL-B can be used to produce useful seafloor relative reflectance mosaics and also that the additional waveform shape-based features contain additional information that may benefit habitat classification—specifically, to aid in distinguishing among hard corals and their coral morphologies, domed and branched. Knowing the spatial extent of changes in coral communities is important to the understanding of resiliency of coral reefs under stress from human impacts.
Publication Date
11-25-2019
Journal Title
Estuaries and Coasts
Publisher
Springer
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
N. Wilson, Parrish, C. E., Battista, T., C. Wright, W., Costa, B., Slocum, R., Dijkstra, J. A., and Tyler, M. T., “Mapping Seafloor Reflectance and Assessing Coral Reef Morphology with EAARL-B Topographic Lidar Waveforms”, Estuaries and Coasts. Springer, 2019.
Comments
This is an open access article published by Springer in Estuaries and Coasts in 2019, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12237-019-00652-9