| My current research centers on the monitoring of coral communities in the inner Gulf of Thailand under various degree of environmental settings and anthropogenic impacts using conventional methods and remotely sensed data. For Thailand, knowledge of precise coral reef mapping is currently limited and what available such simple measure as total area and location is not sufficient as a baseline information for monitoring change. Remote sensing has proved successful in precisely mapping and quantitatively detecting change in the coral reefs in many places around the world where the coral reefs are extensively and well developed. The challenge is that on the opposite end of this spectrum, where the reef development in the Gulf of Thailand is relatively limited how much information can be extracted from remotely sensed data. |  |
Current Research |
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Validation of multiple remote sensors for coral reef habitat mapping and monitoring in the Gulf of Thailand Summary: Coral reefs offer a realm of economic and social goods to humans. They are a source of income, recreation, biodiversity, food, and natural protection against shoreline erosion and storm damage. However, the worldwide coral reef scenery is degrading. Many documents have reported over the past three decades evident signs of deterioration in coral reef communities at local, regional and global scales. In Thailand, increased fresh water run–off, sedimentation, eutrophication, oil pollution, overfishing or destructive fishing practices, improper watershed management, ship groundings or people tramping over corals are some of the human related factors that endanger reefs directly or indirectly. In order to improve understanding on natural coral reef processes and effective conservation practices it is important to assess better methods of characterizing the environment and separating the relative influence of natural and anthropogenic stressors at various scales. The eventual objective of this project is to validate the use of available remote sensors for mapping and monitoring coral reef and in the Gulf of Thailand using remotely sensed data from available Landsat TM, SPOT, Ikonos and newly launched THEOS. It is expected that the temporal variation in the coral reefs revealed by using traditional in situ method can be explained by remote sensing. Applications of remote sensing technology have been used successfully as a tool for mapping, monitoring shallow marine habitats and their environments elsewhere but no similar attempt has been done in this region. Supervisors Prof. Nick Polunin and Prof. John Bythell [Newcastle University] Funding
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