doi: 10.7763/IJESD.2015.V6.726
Assessment of Long Term Thermal Stress on Egyptian Coral Reefs Based on Remotely Sensed Sea Surface Temperature Data
Ahmed El-Adawy1
,
Kazuo Nadaoka2 ,
Abdelazim Negm3 ,
Oliver C. Saavedra4 ,
Mahmoud Hanafy5
- 1the Department of Environmental Engineering
- 2the Department of Mechanical and
- 3Egypt-Japan University of Science and
- 4the Department of Civil Engineering, Graduate
- 5Suez Canal University, Faculty of Science
Abstract
Red Sea tourism is highly dependent on the naturalresources especially the diversity of Egyptian coral reefs. Localcoral bleaching monitoring framework was applied in this studyto investigate the threats. The target area included the sixrichest spots of coral reefs in terms of bio-diversity and toleranceto various stresses. Assessment of the applicability and accuracyof remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) data in theregion were assessed by comparing them with in situmeasurements. The annual and seasonal sea surfacetemperature (SST) trends have been investigated. Twenty threeyears (1990-2013) of SST data were used to assure accurateestimation of the monthly maximum mean (MMM) of SSTClimatology. In addition, the Hot Spots were calculated for eachlocation during last 23 years. A thermal stress index degreeheating weeks (DHW) was calculated in order to assess theaccumulative effect of heat stress. This work suggests thebleaching threshold limit for each location based on thelong-term analysis. The thermal analysis results were in closeagreement with the recorded bleaching events (2010 and 2012).Moreover, they revealed some historical events which may benot recorded properly.
Keywords
- Coral bleaching
- sea surface temperature (SST)
- remote sensing
- climate change
- thermal stress
- Egypt
- Red Sea
How to Cite
Ahmed El-Adawy, Kazuo Nadaoka, Abdelazim Negm, Oliver C. Saavedra, and Mahmoud Hanafy, "Assessment of Long Term Thermal Stress on Egyptian Coral Reefs Based on Remotely Sensed Sea Surface Temperature Data," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development, vol. 6, no. 12, pp. 938-946, 2015. https://doi.org/10.7763/IJESD.2015.V6.726
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2015 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).