Monitoring marine ecological changes on the east coast of Bahrain with Landsat TM

The main aim of this study was to assess the potential of Landsat TM for detecting and quantifying marine habitat changes on the Fasht Al-Adham reef complex of the east coast of Bahrain. The raw data comprized several digital TM images acquired between 1985 and 1992 during different tidal conditions. Following pre-processing and registration to a digitized UTM marine chart, the image processing proceeded in two parts. In the first part, visual interpretation was employed using a combination of principal component and false color composites (FCCs) of the multi-temporal images to identify the changed areas. Then, and in conjunction with extensive field data, the changed areas between the two dates were identified.