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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Mapping Hurricane Damage: A Comparative Analysis Of Satellite Monitoring Methods, Matthew J. Mccarthy, Brita Jessen, Michael J. Barry, Marissa Figueroa, Jessica Mcintosh, Tylar Murray, Jill Schmid, Frank E. Muller-Karger
Mapping Hurricane Damage: A Comparative Analysis Of Satellite Monitoring Methods, Matthew J. Mccarthy, Brita Jessen, Michael J. Barry, Marissa Figueroa, Jessica Mcintosh, Tylar Murray, Jill Schmid, Frank E. Muller-Karger
Marine Science Faculty Publications
Wetlands are the second-most valuable natural resource on Earth but have declined by approximately 70 % since 1900. Restoration and conservation efforts have succeeded in some areas through establishment of refuges where anthropogenic impacts are minimized. However, these areas are still prone to wetland damage caused by natural disasters. Severe storms such as Hurricane Irma, which made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in southwest Florida (USA) on September 11, 2017, can cause the destruction of mangroves and other wetland habitat. Multispectral images from commercial satellites provide a means to assess the extent of the damage to different wetland habitat …
Automated High-Resolution Time Series Mapping Of Mangrove Forests Damaged By Hurricane Irma In Southwest Florida, Matthew J. Mccarthy, Brita Jessen, Michael J. Barry, Marissa Figueroa, Jessica Mcintosh, Tylar Murray, Jill Schmid, Frank E. Muller-Karger
Automated High-Resolution Time Series Mapping Of Mangrove Forests Damaged By Hurricane Irma In Southwest Florida, Matthew J. Mccarthy, Brita Jessen, Michael J. Barry, Marissa Figueroa, Jessica Mcintosh, Tylar Murray, Jill Schmid, Frank E. Muller-Karger
Marine Science Faculty Publications
In September of 2017, Hurricane Irma made landfall within the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve of southwest Florida (USA) as a category 3 storm with winds in excess of 200 km h−1. We mapped the extent of the hurricane’s impact on coastal land cover with a seasonal time series of satellite imagery. Very high-resolution (i.e., <5 m pixel) satellite imagery has proven effective to map wetland ecosystems, but challenges in data acquisition and storage, algorithm training, and image processing have prevented large-scale and time-series mapping of these data. We describe our approach to address these issues to evaluate Rookery Bay ecosystem damage and recovery using 91 WorldView-2 satellite images collected between 2010 and 2018 mapped using automated techniques and validated with a field campaign. Land cover was classified seasonally at 2 m resolution (i.e., healthy mangrove, degraded mangrove, upland, soil, and water) with an overall accuracy of 82%. Digital change detection methods show that hurricane-related degradation was 17% of mangrove forest (~5 km2). Approximately 35% (1.7 km2) of this loss recovered one year after Hurricane Irma. The approach completed the mapping approximately 200 times faster than existing methods, illustrating the ease with which regional high-resolution mapping may be accomplished efficiently.