A research team at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences conducted a study looking at using Earth-orbiting satellites to assess and analyze coral reef biodiversity on a global scale, to show areas of high biodiversity.
According to the press release issued by the University of Miami, the study could help identify marine reef protected areas with high biodiversity, in order to guide future efforts to protect them.
The importance of satellites for coral reef analysis
According to a report by the Live Technology website, satellites equipped with remote sensing technology have created; Revolutionizing the way researchers study coral reef ecosystems, these satellites capture high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface, allowing analysis of various aspects of the biodiversity of organisms and plants in coral reefs, including coral cover, the distribution of living species, and the health of coral reefs in general. .
By analyzing satellite images, researchers can also identify and map different types of coral reefs and coral islands, and obtain information that helps understand the distribution of different coral reef ecosystems and the biodiversity associated with them.
On the other hand, the use of satellites in analyzing the biodiversity of coral reefs can provide many advantages, including obtaining broad image coverage, as they can capture images of vast areas, allowing researchers to study the biodiversity of coral reefs on a global scale, and provides an understanding Comprehensive of the condition of coral reefs around the world.
In addition, satellite images provide snapshots of coral reef ecosystems at a specific time, so researchers can compare images taken at different intervals to track changes in biodiversity over time.
Biodiversity mapping
According to the United Nations Economic Commission website, the term “habitat” refers to a part of an ecosystem that creates favorable conditions for the natural existence or living of an organism, in other words the type of place or location in which the organism or population naturally exists.
Perhaps the most important habitats on Earth are marine habitats, which provide a home for many types of marine organisms and support marine life. Therefore, understanding and monitoring the biodiversity of coral reefs is essential for efforts to preserve their biodiversity. Therefore, recent years have witnessed researchers turning to satellite technology to analyze and assess the state of the world's coral reef biodiversity.
In his statement included in the statement issued by the University of Miami, the lead author of the study, Professor and Head of the Department of Marine Earth Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, Sam Burkes, said: “As remote sensing technology becomes more advanced, we continue to use satellite images to map environmental habitats.” This helps us understand the biological and ecological composition of these systems.”
“We have shown that these maps can be used to guide ecosystem protection,” Purkiss added. “The traditional approach of conducting divers surveys to measure coral reef biodiversity is time-consuming and expensive, so the research team set out to find a new method that uses remote sensing to produce large-scale habitat maps.” worldwide".
On the other hand, the University of Miami statement said, to conduct this study, the research team extracted and analyzed data on the diversity measured by divers of coral reef fish and coral species in the global dataset of divers’ surveys in the Global Coral Reef Expedition of the Khalid Bin Sultan Living Ocean Foundation across the Pacific Ocean. Atlantic and Indian, which maps cover nearly a quarter of the tropical coral reefs in the Earth's oceans.
Assessing the biodiversity of coral reefs
According to the statement issued by the University of Miami, scientists used satellite maps to scrutinize the complexity of seafloor habitat patterns in the oceans, and these maps revealed that they are linked to the diversity of the types of organisms that inhabit them, and these complexities in habitat patterns exist in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
Anna Bakker, a doctoral student in the Department of Marine Earth Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Sciences and co-author of the study, said: “This discovery provides an opportunity to assess the biodiversity of coral reefs on a global scale. The study also showed how the biodiversity of these ecosystems can be revealed from Satellite maps of the sea floor.
In this context, the Live Technology website report said: While satellite technology has proven to be a valuable tool for analyzing the biodiversity of coral reefs, there are still challenges that must be overcome, as cloud cover and water turbidity can affect the quality of satellite images, making it difficult to obtain Accurate data in specific areas.