CORAL REEFS ON INHABITED AND UNINHABITED SMALL ISLANDS, SPERMONDE ARCHIPELAGO, INDONESIA

Abstract. The small islands in Indonesia is providing important ecosystem services. It is important to identify damages of a coral reef ecosystem and whether natural factors or anthropogenic factors are the main causes. Landsat images obtained with different sensors were analyzed for mapping coral reef on inhabited and uninhabited small islands, Spermonde archipelago, Indonesia. Overall accuracies of three habitats classification were 89.2% and 85.6%, respectively. They are live coral, dead coral and non-coral. Ground truth surveys were selected by using the unsupervised classification method The live coral in inhabited islands was slightly greater than in uninhabited. An increasing area of live coral was about 5.3 ha of the total area in 1990 per year while a decreasing of dead coral was 3.5 ha per year in inhabited islands. In uninhabited island, a decreasing speed of live coral habitat area was about 0.6 per year. During 29 years, a significant increase in the dead coral and decrease in live corals. It has been identified that the significant controlling factor for the disturbances in reef ecosystem is derived from natural and anthropogenic.