Estimation of Seagrass Beds Changes in the Barugaiya Village Waters over a Period of 5 Years 2019-2023.

Abstract

<b>Background and Objective:</b> Barugaiya Village is one of the villages located in Selayar Islands Regency, South Sulawesi, which has seagrass beds that are spread almost evenly in its waters. Environmental changes are in the form of declining water quality and damage to coastal ecosystems, one of which is seagrass. Therefore, it is necessary to observe changes in the area of seagrass beds in the waters of Barugaiya Village so that it is known how much seagrass has actually been in the area in the last 5 years. <b>Materials and Methods:</b> Observations were made from March to May, 2023 in the waters of Barugaiya Village, Selayar Islands Regency, South Sulawesi. The method used is seagrass classification using Sentinel-2A images corrected by the water column with the Lyzenga algorithm to reduce the effect of depth. <b>Results:</b> The distribution area of seagrass in Barugaiya Village for the 2019-2023 period was 111.03, 107.16, 103.81, 102.54 and 99.70 ha, respectively. Every year there is a decrease in seagrass area, the rate of decline is around 0.02% each year (1.27-3.87 ha). The change in area over the past 5 years has decreased by 0.11% (11.33 ha). <b>Conclusion:</b> Therefore, long-term monitoring of seagrass beds in the waters of Barugaiya Village which are experiencing a decline is needed so that effective management strategies can be identified.