Sea Surface Temperature Analysis for Predicting Coral Bleaching Induced by Thermal Stress for Hurghada Region Using AVHRR Satellite Imagery

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Marine Science, College of Science, Suez Canal University

2 Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Alexandria University

3 Department of Oceanography, College of Science, Alexandria University

Abstract

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems which are incredibly diverse and have a very important role in the
marine life ecosystem. They are very sensitive to environmental change; one of the most threats to the
coral reefs is thermal stress that could lead to coral bleaching and affects the coral ability to recover.
The satellite approach solution is one of the important monitoring systems to predict thermal stress and
possible coral bleaching alerts. The remote sensing approach uses Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
derived from infrared observations collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer
(AVHRR) sensors from the NOAA polar orbiting satellites using the Multi-Channel Sea-Surface
temperature (MCSST) algorithm. SST was computed for the study area on a daily basis along the year
2009 from 9km resolution AVHRR night images after scaling the byte digital number or DN values
into the appropriate sea surface temperature and convert Pixel Coordinate to Latitude and Longitude
positions. The Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly and Coral Bleaching Hot Spot and Coral Bleaching
Degree Heating Week (DHW) were calculated to define regions of unusual elevated SST and the
occurrence and magnitude of thermal stress as well as the accumulation of thermal stress over time in
order to monitor the cumulative effect as a thermal stress index. Applying the remote sensing approach
on Hurghada region showed a good primary indicator to be used for monitoring coral stress and
predicting possible coral bleaching and coral resilience ability. The aim of the study was to introduce
the satellite approach as an assessment process and a prediction tool of the thermal stress on the coral
that could perform bleaching and that is an important key factor for providing accurate, economical and
useful results for the preservation of the coral reef ecosystem

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