Accurate mapping of seaweed farms with high-resolution imagery in China

Year: 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2023.2203114

Extra Information

Runjie Jin, Zhanjiang Ye, Shuangshuang Chen, Jiali Gu, Junyu He, Lei Huang, George Christakos, Susana Agusti, Carlos M. Duarte & Jiaping Wu (2023) Accurate mapping of seaweed farms with high-resolution imagery in China, Geocarto International, 38:1, DOI: 10.1080/10106049.2023.2203114

Abstract

Seaweed aquaculture is vital in protecting the marine eco-environment and mitigating climate change. China generates more than half of the world’s total seaweed production. However, despite multiple local studies, accurate and reliable information on broad-scale seaweed farms is still scarce. Using an object-based method to classify 3 m spatial resolution Planet Scope images along offshore China, a total of 129,494 ha of cultured seaweed was identified and delineated with an overall accuracy of 95.70% and a KAPPA index of 0.912, respectively. Then, a seaweed map in offshore China in 2018–2019 was developed. The results provided basic information about seaweed farms in China. The approach reported in this work is accurate and efficient, which can be used to replace the conventional method to obtain the culture seaweed information. This study can be of reference for mapping seaweed on a broader or global scale.