Integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and multi-spectral image classification for marine habitat mapping in Oceania

This paper evaluates the usefulness of integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and remote sensing analyses to produce tropical marine habitat maps. Fishers from Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands, visually interpreted a Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) multi-spectral satellite image to identify shallow-water marine environments. Their assessments were used to direct a supervised classification of the image and create habitat maps with indigenously defined habitat classes. Results show that these participatory remote sensing techniques produce accurate broad-scale marine habitat maps that can be useful to managers and decision makers. Participatory methods that draw from indigenous habitat definitions also have the potential benefit of generating new insights about socio-ecological processes and enhancing local acceptance and understanding of conservation projects by allowing stakeholders to actively contribute in management planning.