RSS 1.0Caribbean: Coastal Communities and Coral Reef Management
In 1990 NASA funded the creation of an organization known as the Consortium for an International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) (Kuhn et al. 1991). It is also important to note that this research was also funded in part by the McArthur Foundation.
The purpose of CIESIN is to understand the human dimension of global change by increasing access to and use of earth science and related information by the international scientific and decision making communities. CIESIN will create a facility known as the CIESIN Data and Research Center (CDRC) which is to be located in Michigan. The CDRC will use global change models to develop, archive, and distribute special research products to public users as well as global change scientists. Based on these global change models, the CDRC will collect selected Earth Observing System (EOS) satellite data, as well as data sets from the physical, biological, and social sciences.
Recent Submissions
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Multispectral Change Vector Analysis for Monitoring Coastal Marine EnvironmentsDocumenting temporal changes to coastal zones is an essential part of understanding and managing these environments. The exclusive use of traditional surveying tools may not be practical for monitoring large, remote, or rapidly changing areas. This paper investigates the utility of multispectral Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite data for documenting changes to a Caribbean coastal zone using the change vector analysis processing technique. The area of study was the coastal region near the village of Buen Hombre on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The primary habitats of interest were the intertidal mangrove for ests, and the shallow water seagrasses, macroalgae, and coral reefs. The change vector analysis technique uses any number of spectral bands from multidate satellite data to produce change images that yield information about both the magnitude and direction of differences in pixel values (which are proportional to radiance). The final products were created by appending color-coded change pixels onto a black-and-white base map. The advantages and limitations of the technique for coastal inventories are discussed.
