Download Mapping seaweed beds along Karachi coast using Remote sensing

Mapping seaweed beds along Karachi coast using Remote sensing and GIS
Techniques
Muhammad Danish Siddiqui and Muhammad Abdullah
Institute of space Technology, Karachi. Email:[email protected]
One of the important components for coastal system are seaweeds. Seaweed provide numerous ecosystem
facilities: habitats, fishing nursery grounds, and provide feed production for aquatic biota; ability to
absorb nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus and Carbon fixation for seawater purification. It’s an
important coastal resource that has great economic potential due to its utilization in food, cosmetics
products. Seaweed resources are present along Pakistan coastal areas mainly around Karachi shoreline
and there exists a potential market for seaweed in the country that is yet untapped.The need to preserve
and map seaweed sites along Karachi coast can be appreciated by realizing the importance of these
precious coastal resources. To protect marine biodiversity, regular monitoring and mapping of seaweeds
are important to regulate their growth and their dependent species in order to maintain their biological
associations. Seaweed resources in Pakistan are still unexplored and unmapped. The aim of this study is
to map naturally existing seaweed resources along the Karachi coast identify the environmental parameter
which impact on seaweed growth along Karachi coastal area. To estimate marine resources such as
seaweed over a certain area using traditional methods require extensive amount of labor, cost and time.
Remote sensing techniques, on the other hand, offer good alternative to perform studies on a larger scale
using minimum resources as compared to conventional methods. In this paper Remote sensing satellite
such as World view-2 are utilized for extracting seaweed resources. The environmental parameters
helpful for seaweed growth will also be assessed using satellite data.