Abstract
This research develops an innovative tool for society to automatically map the resilience of seagrass ecosystems. Seagrass ecosystems are of great importance to humans and provide coastal flood protection, income from tourism, and habitat for flagship species (sea turtles). However, these vital ecosystems are rapidly deteriorating due to increased human disturbance, including the direct impact of tourism overdevelopment along coastlines. Inspired by the recent developments in spatial resilience indicators, the emerging technological advances of machine learning, and the rise of citizen science, our new team of Indonesian and Dutch scientists will join expertise to develop a tool to automatically map seagrasses, sea turtles and ecosystem resilience using drones, citizen science data and machine learning algorithms. This tool will be tested to map tourism impact and will ultimately help protect and manage coastal ecosystems under increasing human disturbance.
Netherlands