I Nyoman Radiarta creator Tripathi, Nitin Kumar Chairperson Borne, Frederic Examination committee Jensen, K. R. Examination committee PAATP, ADB Loan No. 1526-INO Scholarship Donor text series technical report th Bangkok Asian Institute of Technology 2002 continuing eng 78 leaves Coral reefs are important resources for the great majority of tropical countries. However, very little info1mation on maps showing the distribution of various benthic habitats in the coral reef is available. Remote sensing technologies have great potential in overcoming this information void. In this present study, Landsat 7 ETM+ has been used for investigating coral reef habitats that is mainly dedicated to coral mapping on reef top areas in shallow water depths. GIS technique and field data are also considered in this study. The study area is located around three major islands (Mensanak, Medang and Benan Islands) and several smaller islands in Riau Archipelagos, Riau Province. This area is one of the Coral ReefManagement (COREMAP) areas. Bands 1 and 2 were used for mapping coral habitats in the study area. Image enhancement techniques have been applied for extracting benthic habitats (biotic and abiotic) such as: band ratio, principal component analysis and water colunm correction. Algorithms were developed to marginalize the bottom effects on spectral responses. Final classification using K Mean classification has identified six classes of reef habitat. By using 20 sampling points, an overall classification accuracy of about 76% (or a kappa coefficient of 0.69) was achieved. This study indicated that using Landsat 7 ETM+ with the spatial resolution of 30 m, sand could be separated from other benthic habitats easily. However, difficulties in separation of bio habitat from other benthic habitats were found in this study. Separations between live coral and sand were easier than between live coral and bio habitat because on the image both of them appeared relatively dark. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, School of Advanced Technologies Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology Coral reef ecology Remote sensing Geographic information systems Asian Institute of Technology. http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B07510 http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B07510 030117 20260818085953.0