Timesofmalta.com reports that the MAARES project, co-funded by the MCST Space Fund Programme and Malta’s Ministry for the Environment, Energy and Enterprise (MEEE), has started to deliver its first tangible results one year into its implementation.
Through a series of SCUBA dives within Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows in shallow waters within a number of local embayments, a series of aerial drone flights over the same meadows and the utilisation of high-resolution satellite data (e.g. Sentinel 2), researchers collaborating on the project managed to accurately distinguish seagrass meadows from other benthic habitats within the mapped embayments. In turn, this milestone will enable the delivery of high-resolution distribution maps for Posidonia oceanica, thus establishing a reliable baseline from which to monitor future changes in the same distribution and hence supporting marine management efforts.
This high-resolution mapping exercise can be supplemented within the future elaboration of indices which reflect, for example, the density (a proxy for state of health) of the seagrass meadows being monitored given that generated values are validated through ground-truthing (SCUBA diving). P. oceanica-dominated assemblages are considered, within EU legislation, as a priority habitat by virtue of the pivotal role these play within marine ecosystems.
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