International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Red Sea tourism is highly dependent on the natural resources especially the diversity of Egyptian coral reefs. Local coral bleaching monitoring framework was applied in this study to investigate the threats. The target area included the six richest spots of coral reefs in terms of bio-diversity and tolerance to various stresses. Assessment of the applicability and accuracy of remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST) data in the region were assessed by comparing them with in situ measurements. The annual and seasonal sea surface temperature (SST) trends have been investigated. Twenty three years (1990-2013) of SST data were used to assure accurate estimation of the monthly maximum mean (MMM) of SST Climatology. In addition, the Hot Spots were calculated for each location during last 23 years. A thermal stress index degree heating weeks (DHW) was calculated in order to assess the accumulative effect of heat stress. This work suggests the bleaching threshold limit for each location based on the long-term analysis. The thermal analysis results were in close agreement with the recorded bleaching events (2010 and 2012). Moreover, they revealed some historical events which may be not recorded properly.

Index Terms—Coral bleaching, sea surface temperature (SST), remote sensing, climate change, thermal stress, Egypt, Red Sea.

Ahmed El-Adawy is with the Department of Environmental Engineering, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology E-JUST, New Borg El-Arab, Alexandria, Egypt (e-mail: ahmed.eladawy@ejust.edu.eg).
Kazuo Nadaoka is with the Department of Mechanical and Environmental Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: nadaoka@mei.titech.ac.jp).
Abdelazim Negm is with Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology E-JUST, New Borg El-Arab, Alexandria, Egypt (e-mail: negm@ejust.edu.eg).
Oliver C. Saavedra is with the Department of Civil Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: saavedra.o.aa@m.titech.ac.jp).
Mahmoud Hanafy is with Suez Canal University, Faculty of Science, Marine Science Department, Egypt (e-mail: hanafy@science.suez.edu.eg).

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Cite: Ahmed Eladawy, Kazuo Nadaoka, Abdelazim Negm, Oliver C. Saavedra, and Mahmoud Hanafy, "Assessment of Long Term Thermal Stress on Egyptian Coral Reefs Based on Remotely Sensed Sea Surface Temperature Data," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 6, no. 12, pp. 938-946, 2015.