Seagrass Aboveground Carbon Stock Mapping using PlanetScope SuperDove Imagery in Nemberala, Rote Island, East Nusa Tenggara

Abstract

Seagrass ecosystem is natural objects that can be used to adapt and mitigate climate change through blue carbon sequestration. There are 16 seagrass species in Indonesia and the high diversity of these species supports the high potential of carbon that can be absorbed and stored. This study aimed to develop a general equation to estimate seagrass aboveground carbon stock (AGC) from the percent cover (PC), and to map seagrass AGC using PlanetScope imagery in Nemberala, Rote Island. Nemberala has very diverse seagrass species such as Enhalus acoroides (Ea), Cymodocea rotundata (Cr), Halophila ovalis (Ho), Syringodium isoetifolium (Si), Thalassodendron ciliatum (Tc) and Thalassia hemprichii (Th). The results of laboratory analysis to obtain the value of carbon stocks using the Loss on Ignition method from each species were 0.016, 0.004, 0.001, 0.002, 0.001, and 0.0001 (gC/leaf) for Ea, Th, Cr, Si, Tc, and Ho, respectively. The general equation for predicting AGC from PC is SeagrassAGC = (0.051*SeagrassPC) – 0.635 with r of 0.61 and R2 of 0.36. This formula will be applied to convert field seagrass PC data to AGC, which will then be used to train and test the accuracy of seagrass AGC mapping based on PlanetScope SuperDove 8 bands image.