Abstract
CARIB-COAST is an international project lead by the French Geological and Mining Research Bureau (French Geological Survey). Its ambition is to pool, co-construct and disseminate approaches to monitoring, coastal risk prevention and adaptation to climate change in the Caribbean. Various siteshave been identified in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Martin, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago to assess the role of coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs in the protection against coastal erosion. Given the extent of the area of interest, the diversity of pilot sites, and the intent to develop a common approach for all areas, this study has taken advantage of current available remote sensing data to construct a vulnerability index involving several complex and interacting parameters, represented by diverse data types. To do so, this study (1) produces maps of mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs distribution using high resolution Sentinel 2 data in a supervised classification approach, (2) uses very high resolution Pleiades and PlanetScope images to produce surface metrics (e.g., texture, density, fragmentation) describing ecosystems at a fine scale, and (3) applies a multi-criteria analysis to these metrics combined with other variables (e.g., geomorphology, socio-economics) in order to develop an ecosystem-based index of coastal vulnerability (EBCVI) for each pilot site. The knowledge of local partners will allow a weighting of the importance of each criterion in the index. This index has the potential to be used as a management tool to assess impacts of climate change on Caribbean coasts.