Thesis abstract:

Seagrass meadows have been identified as significant in mitigating the effects of climate change due to their disproportionately high rate of carbon sequestration compared to terrestrial carbon sinks. Despite their importance, seagrass ecosystems have been consistently degrading and disappearing for decades, primarily due to climate change and other anthropogenic pressures. Climate change mitigation strategies would benefit by taking seagrass ecosystems into account, but current understanding of the extent, composition and biomass of seagrass meadows is limited. Optical remote sensing has been used to successfully map seagrass at large scales using a range of approaches, but seagrass monitoring still chiefly relies upon laborious and expensive field work or manual interpretation of aerial imagery. In the context of recent technological developments in remote sensing, such as Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and affordable, easily deployable CubeSats, there is a clear need to continue development of remote sensing approaches to seagrass mapping and monitoring. This project seeks to refine remote sensing methods for mapping and monitoring seagrass in Australia and identify whether an optical remote sensing program could provide sufficient accuracy for carbon accounting.