Satellite Remote Sensing for Coastal Management: A Review of Successful Applications

Abstract

Management of coastal and marine natural resources presents a number of challenges as a growing global population and a changing climate require us to find better strategies to conserve the resources on which our health, economy, and overall well-being depend. To evaluate the status and trends in changing coastal resources over larger areas, managers in government agencies and private stakeholders around the world have increasingly turned to remote sensing technologies. A surge in collaborative and innovative efforts between resource managers, academic researchers, and industry partners is becoming increasingly vital to keep pace with evolving changes of our natural resources. Synoptic capabilities of remote sensing techniques allow assessments that are impossible to do with traditional methods. Sixty years of remote sensing research have paved the way for resource management applications, but uncertainties regarding the use of this technology have hampered its use in management fields. Here we review examples of remote sensing applications in the sectors of coral reefs, wetlands, water quality, public health, and fisheries and aquaculture that have successfully contributed to management and decision-making goals.

Coral Reef Monitoring, Reef Assessment Technologies, and Ecosystem-Based Management

“…Two major categories of satellite observations of coral reef areas may be defined by the objectives of the application (Eakin et al, 2010;McCarthy et al, 2017). The first category focuses on environmental conditions that affect coral reef organisms, such as variations in temperature, light, waves, and winds.…”

Sea Surface-Visible Aquaculture Spatial-Temporal Distribution Remote Sensing: A Case Study in Liaoning Province, China from 2000 to 2018

“…It is difficult to obtain accurate information such as spatial pattern distribution and overall marine aquaculture areas. With the development of remote sensing technology, multi-temporal, short-period, and wide-coverage remote sensing data provide new technical support for the monitoring of aquaculture areas and dynamic changes [15][16][17][18][19]. At present, from the perspective of spatial distribution, aquaculture mainly consists of two parts: one is land pond aquaculture, the other is marine aquaculture.…”

A Methodology to Assess Land Use Development, Flooding, and Wetland Change as Indicators of Coastal Vulnerability

“…In Southeastern North Carolina, planners recognize the importance of ecosystem services and the vulnerability of the coastal environment and need information to support responsible decision making to revise policies for managing urban development. Wetlands are sensitive and important natural resources that provide ecosystem services such as protection from storm impacts, but most research focuses on mapping wetlands and there is little information about the geographic connection between changes in wetlands and how these changes may relate to changes in upland areas that are becoming increasingly at risk to flooding [12][13][14]. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to utilize geospatial analysis techniques to synthesize a variety of data to derive indices of risk and to derive new measures of shoreline change with respect to wetland change and urban development.…”