Effects of the Construction of Granadilla Industrial Port in Seagrass and Seaweed Habitats Using Very-High-Resolution Multispectral Satellite Imagery

Seagrass and seaweed meadows hold a very important role in coastal and marine ecosystems. However, anthropogenic impacts pose risks to these delicate habitats. This paper analyses the multitemporal impact of the construction of the largest industrial port in the Canary Islands, near the Special Area of Conservation Natura 2000, on Cymodocea nodosa seagrass meadows (sebadales) of the South of Tenerife, in the locality of Granadilla (Canary Islands, Spain). Very-high-resolution WorldView-2 multispectral satellite data were used for the analysis. Specifically, three images were selected before, during, and after the construction of the port (2011, 2014, and 2022, correspondingly). Initially, advanced pre-processing of the images was performed, and then seabed maps were obtained using the machine learning K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) supervised classification model, discriminating 12 different bottom types in Case-2 complex waters. The maps achieved high-quality metrics with Precision values of 85%, 81%, and 80%, recall of 76%, 77%, and 77%, and F1 scores of 80%, 79%, and 77% for 2011, 2014, and 2022, respectively. The results mainly show that the construction directly affected the seagrass and seaweed habitats. In particular, the impact of the port on the meadows of Cymodocea nodosa, Caulerpa prolifera, and maerl was assessed. The total maerl population was reduced by 1.9 km2 throughout the study area. However, the Cymodocea nodosa population was maintained at the cost of colonizing maerl areas. Furthermore, the port sedimented a total of 0.98 km2 of seabed, especially Cymodocea nodosa and maerl. In addition, it was observed that Caulerpa prolifera was established as a meadow at the entrance of the port, replacing part of the Cymodocea nodosa and maerl areas. As additional results, bathymetric maps were generated from satellite imagery with the Sigmoid model, and the presence of a submarine outfall was, as well, presented.