Shallow water habitats monitoring using simulated PRISMA hyperspectral data and Depth Invariant Index – the case of coral reef in Maldives

Abstract Environmental crises have negative impact to marine ecosystems. Coral reefs which offer great wealth of habitats are considered one the most vulnerable. Remote sensing approaches can be utilized for monitoring, but scattering and absorption under water pose serious challenges passive sensors. While hyperspectral data often more effective than multispectral data, they unavailable. In this study, we describe preliminary effort combine depth invariant index (DII) simulated habitat classification in shallow water. Initial observations suggest incorporating DII generate homogenous patches similar estimated depths, potentially improves accuracies. Pre-processing procedure generation implemented using Sen2Coral Toolbox SNAP, useful. Further studies with groundtruth measurement needed establish conclusive discussions.