TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL DYNAMICS OF SUBMERGED SEAGRASS AT

ABSTRACT: Seagrass mapping had been well studied since a couple of decades ago, mostly at small area. As the time flies, documentation on the submerged seagrass extent changes is still unresolved in tropical seagrass ecology. Traditional remote sensing approaches have lacked the temporal resolution and consistency to appropriately address this issue. Over time, rapid development in the coastal area of Johor, which was begin in 1990’s is eventually lead to spatial distribution changes of seagrass. However, these changes have not been documented although it is very important as the input of impact assessment of on-going development in the area; especially the changes of water quality that positively influence the distribution of submerged seagrass and kelp density because they are very sensitive and react to these changes immediately. Hence, due to effective cost, time and manpower offering by the remote sensing technology, dynamic distribution of the seagrass across the time before development until current coastal development was reported; started from 1989 to 2014 (5-year intervals). This approach can analyze the seagrass spatial changes comprehensively through the mapping on a series of Landsat images the TM and most recently, OLI by using water column correction technique. This study is very important in documenting the changes of seagrass extent as well as the indirect impact of human-disturbance activities on the area to the seagrass ecology. The results show a dramatic chang