All low tide, cloud-free Sentinel-2 imagery from 2017 to 2023 were then processed to provide habitat classification at the 10 m resolution and compute time-series of inter-tidal seagrass extent for 12 known inter-tidal seagrass meadows across Western Europe and Northern Africa. Firstly, low NDVI and Seagrass Percentage Cover pixels (below 0.25 NDVI, ~20% SPC) were removed from the analysis, meaning some areas of low inter-tidal seagrass cover may have been missed with potential underestimation of cumulative seagrass cover. However, for the current analysis, the objective was to create an up-to-date description of inter-tidal seagrass phenology across the North-East Atlantic. The dotted arrows show the theoretical effect of global climate change on shifting phenology of higher latitude seagrass meadows to be more similar to lower latitude seagrass meadows. More importantly, perhaps, this work shows how lacking the current synoptic mapping of inter-tidal seagrass phenology is.

Source: The North Africa Journal July 16, 2024 20:06 UTC