Optimizing Seagrass Detection in Lampung Selatan: Leveraging Machine Learning Algorithms and Sentinel-2A Imagery

Abstract

Seagrass beds are one of the coastal ecosystems that play an important role in maintaining the stability of blue carbon. However, high community activities threaten the existence of seagrass beds themselves. South Lampung Regency is one of the areas with considerable seagrass potential but the availability of distribution and density data is still minimal. This research aims to identify and map seagrass density as a first step for seagrass management. The data used in this research is Sentinel 2A multispectral image. Machine learning-based classification methods used are random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) because these algorithms have a good ability to distinguish objects based on their features. This study uses a 2-level classification scheme, where level 1 consists of land, shallow sea, and deep-sea classes. Level 2 is the shallow marine bottom benthic habitat class. The type of seagrass found in this area is Enhalus acoroides. Based on the results of the analysis, low, medium, and high-density classes were obtained with an area of low around 20.12 ha, medium around 34.67 ha and high around 320.12ha with a total area of 374.91ha. RF has a higher overall accuracy of 88.00% while SVM accuracy is 84.00% so it can be concluded that Sentinel 2A images can be used to detect seagrass meadows.