The thin(ning) green line? Investigating changes in Kenya's seagrass coverage

Harcourt, William D.; Briers, Robert A.; Huxham, Mark

Abstract

Knowledge of seagrass distribution is limited to a few well-studied sites and poor where resourcesare scant (e.g. Africa), hence global estimates of seagrass carbon storage are inaccurate. Here, we analysed freely available Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery to quantify contemporary coverage and change in seagrass between 1986 and 2016 on Kenya’s coast. Using field surveys and independent estimates of historical seagrass, we estimate total cover of Kenya’s seagrass to be 317.1 ± 27.2 km226 , following losses of 0.85% yr-1 since 1986. Losses increased from 0.29% yr-1 in 2000 to 1.59% yr-1 in 2016, releasing up to 2.17 Tg carbon since 1986. Anecdotal evidence suggests fishing pressure is an important cause of loss and is likely to intensify in the near future. If these results are representative for Africa, global estimates of seagrass extent and loss need reconsidering.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 28, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 28, 2018
• Publication Date: 2018-11
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 3, 2018
• Journal: Biology Letters
• Print ISSN: 1744-9561
• Publisher: Royal Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 11
• Article Number: 20180227
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0227
• Keywords: Seagrass, mapping, Kenya, blue carbon,
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1310099
• Related Public URLs: Link to data - https://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.n08qs2s
• Contract Date: Oct 3, 2018