Mapping Reef Habitat Extent in the West Philippine Sea Luzon Coast using ARRAS

The West Philippine Sea (WPS) Luzon Coast habitat area and extent was mapped for the valuation of the reef’s ecosystem services such as a source of food and biomedical materials, coastal protection, and recreation. Ground truth data were geotagged panoramic image mosaics from the captured videos using the Automated Rapid Reef Assessment System (ARRAS). Ten percent of the image mosaics, each identified as predominantly composed of corals, seaweed, seagrass, rubble, or sand, had their corresponding spectral values in the satellite imagery served as a training set for the deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) classification to create shallow coast habitat maps. More than 50% of the remaining mosaics were used for validation, resulting in a balanced agreement or accuracy of 0.74. The total calculated reef area in the WPS Luzon Coast was 6,275 km ² , 1,838 km ² of which were predominantly composed of corals, 970 km ² seagrass beds, 1,740 km ² seaweed, 596 km ² rubble, and 1,132 km ² sand. This study provides the most spatially comprehensive assessment of nearshore habitat coverage for the WPS and presents a framework for resource valuation of coastal systems.