Coral Reefs on the Northern Shore of Vanua Levu (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Coral Reefs on the Northern Shore of Vanua Levu

Caption

The extensive coral reefs on the northern shore of Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island, can be seen on this natural color Landsat 8 image acquired on May 10, 2015. The sensors aboard Landsat 8 were designed to have higher sensitivity to brightness and color; they use 4,096 values to digitize their signals (12-bit data) whereas the last-generation sensor on Landsat 7 was slightly less sensitive and used only 256 data values (8-bits) to describe the range of brightness it recorded. This higher sensor sensitivity has had a positive impact on coral reef delineations, area measurements, and depth estimations.

Credit

NASA/USGS/Landsat

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