Sea Surface Temperature Analysis for Predicting Coral Bleaching Induced by Thermal Stress for Hurghada Region Using AVHRR Satellite Imagery | ||
| Catrina: The International Journal of Environmental Sciences | ||
| Article 6, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 41-49 PDF (341.66 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| Authors | ||
| S Zakaria1; B. Salem2; K. El-Din3; M. Selim* 1 | ||
| 1Department of Marine Science, College of Science, Suez Canal University | ||
| 2Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Alexandria University | ||
| 3Department of Oceanography, College of Science, Alexandria University | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Coral reefs are vital ecosystems which are incredibly diverse and have a very important role in the marine life ecosystem. They are very sensitive to environmental change; one of the most threats to the coral reefs is thermal stress that could lead to coral bleaching and affects the coral ability to recover. The satellite approach solution is one of the important monitoring systems to predict thermal stress and possible coral bleaching alerts. The remote sensing approach uses Sea Surface Temperature (SST) derived from infrared observations collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors from the NOAA polar orbiting satellites using the Multi-Channel Sea-Surface temperature (MCSST) algorithm. SST was computed for the study area on a daily basis along the year 2009 from 9km resolution AVHRR night images after scaling the byte digital number or DN values into the appropriate sea surface temperature and convert Pixel Coordinate to Latitude and Longitude positions. The Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly and Coral Bleaching Hot Spot and Coral Bleaching Degree Heating Week (DHW) were calculated to define regions of unusual elevated SST and the occurrence and magnitude of thermal stress as well as the accumulation of thermal stress over time in order to monitor the cumulative effect as a thermal stress index. Applying the remote sensing approach on Hurghada region showed a good primary indicator to be used for monitoring coral stress and predicting possible coral bleaching and coral resilience ability. The aim of the study was to introduce the satellite approach as an assessment process and a prediction tool of the thermal stress on the coral that could perform bleaching and that is an important key factor for providing accurate, economical and useful results for the preservation of the coral reef ecosystem | ||
| Keywords | ||
| bleaching; Coral reef; Hurghada; Remote Sensing; Sea Surface Temperature | ||
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