Mapping eelgrass habitat in southern Nova Scotia with Worldview-2/3 satellite imagery / by Kristen L. Wilson, Melisa C. Wong, and Emmanuel Devred.: Fs97-6/3629E-PDF

"Eelgrass (Zostera marina), the dominant species of seagrass in the Maritime provinces, provides many ecosystem functions and services. As such, maps that quantify its spatial distribution are a highly sought after data layer. Using eight Worldview-2/3 satellite images, we explored the ability to map eelgrass habitat across a gradient of environmental conditions along the South Shore of Nova Scotia. We found that Worldview-2/3 can routinely and accurately map submerged aquatic vegetation, as well as having some skill in differentiating eelgrass from other vegetation. This skill results from the habitat structure of eelgrass in this region which was often shallow (<3 m) and found in large monospecific beds. As expected, this skill decreased as bed size decreased and the predominance of other submerged vegetation increased. The maximum depth at which bottom habitat was detectable ranged from 1 to 12 m depending on water transparency. We demonstrated that Worldview-2/3 can detect changes in the surface area of eelgrass habitat between spring and summer, albeit issues in the satellite image quality related to sunglint, coloured dissolved organic matter concentration and sediment load may limit this ability. In total, 130 km² of habitat type were mapped across the eight images, covering 92 km² along the South shore after duplicated mapping events were removed (i.e., change detection)"--Abstract, page viii.

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