Global Evaluation of Platform-Top Sedimentary Features

• Main Author: Dempsey, Alexandra C.
• Format: Others
• Published: NSUWorks 2013
• Subjects: carbonate platform; habitat mapping; remote sensing; morphometrics; geographic information system (GIS); geomorphology; Marine Biology; Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
• Online Access: http://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_stuetd/170; http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1228&context=occ_stuetd

Remote sensing has transformed coral reef science in the last decades. It is now possible to audit reef health and geomorphology at global scale and very high spatial resolution. This work utilizes the vast and no-cost archive of imagery housed within Google Earth (GE). GE was used to interrogate the morphometric properties (size, shape, complexity, etc) of the components that combine to yield a reef environment (reef structures, sediment sheets, and so forth). The data populated a morphometric database for reefs globally that are partitioned by their architecture. The database has been investigated using information theory. The aim of the work is to identify whether motifs of carbonate platforms within these reef types are predictable on the basis of environmental parameters. The results are relevant to assess depositional patterns to develop rules for predicting how facies are distributed in modern systems and ancient reservoirs.