- Title
- Multi-temporal assessment of chlorophyll-a concentration in estuarine waters: a case study of sundays and swartkops estuaries, Eastern Cape Province
- Creator
- Gwazani, Nothando
- Subject
- Chlorophyll -- South Africa Estuaries -- South Africa
- Date Issued
- 2019
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MSc (Applied Remote Sensing & GIS)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/11972
- Identifier
- vital:39123
- Description
- Estuaries are productive and delicate marine systems, which are of commercial, recreational and aesthetic value as they reflect the land use of a catchment by creating “nutrient traps”, these nutrients are absorbed by water and later released into the coastal oceans. Disturbances in an estuary influence a wide variety of habitats and organisms in a marine ecosystem, for example, high chlorophyll-a affects marine species that utilize calm waters, food and turbid water found in estuaries. The degradation of South African estuaries is an on-going accelerating process; therefore, there is a need for preservation measures for estuarine ecosystems by means of monitoring nutrient flow. This research was aimed at assessing the use of OLCI ocean color products in monitoring chl-a concentration and impacts of the estuaries in Algoa Bay. OLCI on the Sentinel platforms, coupled with OCNN and OC4ME algorithms were employed to assess the distribution of chlorophyll-a in Swartkops and Sunday’s estuaries. OC4Me and OCNN are the default models designed for OLCI data. However, the OLCI resolution was not able to measure the chl-a concentration within these estuaries. Therefore, satellite product assessment was primarily focused on the Algoa bay scale due to the resolution of the available data. SNAP and Matlab were applied for the production of the final products. Accuracy assessment was used to check the agreement between the in situ datasets of chl-a and the final processed satellite products. Results of this investigation point that OCNN did not perform well in the study as compared to OC4Me and it did not produce accurate results in areas with very high biomass concentration. The research concludes by recommending the use of higher resolution data such as Sentinel 2 MSI (10m, 20m, and 60m resolution) for resolving chlorophyll-a within these estuaries.
- Format
- 78 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Science and Agriculture
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of GIS & Remote Sensing
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Gwazani_201312770_GIS and Remote Sensing.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |