APPLICATION OF GEOINFORMATICS FOR MARINE PROTECTED AREA IN THA RAI ISLAND, NAKHON SI THAMMARAT PROVINCE

Abstract

 This study aimed to map Seagrass Protected Area in Tha Rai Island, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. The reflection of the earth’s surface energy of Landsat 8 images was analyzed for seagrass bed. It had been categorized by Support Vector Machine (SVM) supervised classification method with the training area from the field work and overlay with the shipping route in order to clearly define the Marine Protected Area that will not affect people in the community. Seagrass meadows have declined 45.83 percent from 2007 - 2019. Therefore, the seagrass protected area has been established urgently by declaring the total area of 306,017.01 m2 or 191.26 Rai and display the site in a map. This helps everyone to be clear in determining the area of seagrass protected areas (Marine Protected Area: MPA) and create conservation management actions to protect seagrasses around Tha Rai Island together.