Spatial distribution of benthic habitat derived from Planetscope image in shallow water of Kahyapu Village, Enggano Island

¹ Marine Science Study Program, Faculty of Agriculture, Bengkulu University, 38371 Bengkulu, Indonesia
² Department of Forestry, Faculty of Forestry, Tanjungpura University, 78124 Pontianak, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: anaariasari@unib.ac.id

Abstract

The shallow waters of Kahyapu Village has an essential benthic habitat which is important to monitor due to the dynamic influenced by the Indian Ocean and anthropogenic activities. Benthic habitat monitoring can be used through utilize the Planetscope image, which is a high-resolution satellite image that provides a daily image acquired and detailed information, such as benthic habitat. This research aims to map the spatial distribution of benthic habitats using Planetscope images derived from three different set of bands processed differently: Principal Component Analysis transformed surface reflectance (SR-PC band), PC-transformed sunglint-corrected bands (Deglint-PC band) and PC-transformed depth invariant index bands (CII-PC band). A field survey was carried out using an Underwater Photo Transect based on variation of benthic habitat in the field. Maximum likelihood image classification was used to train the benthic habitat map using model samples from field surveys. A major benthic habitat class was determined, which consisted of coral reefs, seagrass, macroalgae, and substrate. Seagrass reached approximately 48% (911.46 hectares), substrate covered 37% (705.12 hectares), coral reefs closed nearly 13% (249.63 hectares), and macroalgae just got 2% (39.78 hectares) of the total of benthic habitat distribution. The benthic habitat spatial distribution illustrated that seagrass and substrate class dominated the benthic habitat spatial distribution, while the macroalgae class was challenging to map.