2006/06/01 by Emily Lundblad, Emily R. Lundblad, Dawn J. Wright +9 · 4 citations
Environmental Science · #American samoa #Benthic habitat #Benthic zone #Biodiversity #Biogeography #Cartography #Coral #Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies #Coral reef #Ecology #Fishery #Geography #Geology #Marine and fisheries research #Oceanography #Reef #Remote sensing #Satellite imagery #Terrain
paper · doi:10.1080/01490410600738021
openalex publication_date 2006/06/01 · crossref created 2006/06/01 · crossref issued 2006/07/01 · crossref published 2006/07/01 · crossref published-print 2006/07/01 · crossref deposited 2021/07/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04 · crossref indexed 2026/08/04
Coral reef ecosystems, the most varied on earth, continually face destruction from anthropogenic and natural threats. The U.S. Coral Reef Task Force seeks to characterize and map priority coral reef ecosystems in the U.S./Trust Territories by 2009. Building upon NOAA Biogeography shallow-water classifications based on Ikonos imagery, presented here are new methods, based on acoustic data, for classifying benthic terrain below 30 m, around Tutuila, American Samoa. The result is a new classification scheme for American Samoa that extends and improves the NOAA Biogeography scheme, which, although developed for Pacific island nations and territories, is only applicable to a maximum depth of 30 m, due to the limitations of satellite imagery. The scheme may be suitable for developing habitat maps pinpointing high biodiversity around coral reefs throughout the western Pacific.