High Resolution Remote Sensing Monitoring and Analysis of Coral Reef Degradation Caused by Outbreaks of Biological Natural Enemies: A Case Study of the Taiping Island in the South China Sea

The global proliferation of natural predators, including Terpios hoshinota sponge and crown-of-thorns starfish, poses a significant threat to the ecological vitality of coral reefs. However, coral reef research currently lacks comprehensive quantitative studies on the ramifications of predator outbreaks in various coral reef landform types. To bridge this knowledge gap, this study utilized a dataset comprising 26 Sentinel-2 remote sensing images spanning the years 2016 to 2022, both pre- and post-two distinct episodes of natural predator outbreaks involving the Terpios hoshinota sponge and crown-of-thorns starfish, within the vicinity of Taiping Island. High-resolution GF-2 (PMS) remote-sensing images and satellite data were used to augment the analysis. Based on data obtained from the Google Earth platform of the Geographic Information System for remote sensing imagery, we conducted an experiment involving the classification of coral reef landform types in Taiping Island in the South China Sea. During the Su