ESTIMATION OF SABAH’S MANGROVE FOREST COVER CHANGE

AND BIOMASS USING LANDSAT SATELLITE IMAGERY AND SRTM

ELEVATION DATA

Esther Sim Yue Li

Faculty of Science and Natural Resources, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 88400 Kota Kinabalu,
Sabah, Malaysia
estherysl@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: Mangrove forests are one of the world’s most diverse and threatened
ecosystems and is continuously depleting despite conservation and management
efforts. The damages caused to mangrove ecosystems such as coral reef destruction,
overharvesting, pollution, aquaculture, and coastal development are few of the
reasons for mangrove forest degradation. The total mangroves in Sabah cover a
greater area than any state in Malaysia. Remotely sensed imagery and processing
technique that has been established over past decades acts as a primary
management tool for decision making which are of importance to conservation and
environmental assessments. Although numerous studies has been conducted on
mangrove forest environments using various remote sensing approaches for
mapping and monitoring forest cover change, few studies has been conducted on
the mangrove forests of East Malaysia. In this study, we aim to assess and monitor
land cover change of mangrove forests along the coastal districts in Sabah using
Landsat images from year 2000 to 2013. The extent of Sabah’s mangrove forest
cover will be assessed using Landsat satellite imagery and SRTM to produce a height
and biomass map. Supervised classification and maximum likelihood algorithm was
used to obtain forest cover change as a method of desktop assessment combined
with minimal amount of fieldwork in the complex mangrove environment.
Consequently, with the freely available medium resolution Landsat images, it is
satisfactory to detect changes in mangroves over the period of 10 – 14 years.

KEYWORDS: Mangrove, Forest Cover Change, Remote Sensing, Landsat Images,

Sabah, SRTM