Reflectance Characteristic of Certain Mangrove Species at Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, Malaysia Beh Boon Chun, Mohd. Zubir Mat Jafri and Lim Hwee San School of Physic, University Sains Malaysia, 11800 Minden, Penang, Malaysia. teddybeh86@hotmail.com, mjafri@usm.my, hslim@usm.my Abstract—Spectral reflectance properties of mangrove plants play an important role in the interpretation and analysis of mangrove species in coastal region. In this study, reflectance of several mangrove species at Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve will be measured and investigated. The four selected mangrove species include Rhizophora apiculata, Rhizophora mucronata, Acrostichum speciosum and Acrostichum aureum. The reflectance value will be obtained by using a handheld spectroradiometer. The reflectance response of the mangrove species from visible to near infrared wavelength were analyzed with the aid of Viewspec Pro software. In the visible spectrum portion, Acrostichum speciosum recorded the highest reflectance value of 16% amongst the four mangrove species. However, highest reflectance value of 53% was recorded by Rhizophora apiculata in the Near Infra Red (NIR) region. Understanding of reflectance characteristic in different mangrove canopy is crucial and necessary in order to study on the mangrove ecosystem. Keywords: Spectral reflectance, Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, spectroradiometer, Rhizophora. I. INTRODUCTION Mangrove forests are typically made up of salt tolerant species of shrubs, trees or woody plants that can be found in tropical and subtropical climate country. Mangrove can survive in brackish water, extreme tidal zones, harsh conditions of high salinity, muddy and oxygen depleted soils with their special prop root system (pneumatrophores) to form a unique ecosystem along coastal shoreline. They are particularly important as fertile nurseries and provide breeding ground for marine life and its associate community. Besides, mangrove also serves as a natural coastline protection or buffer against tsunami, hurricanes, flood, storms or erosion of inland area by dissipating strong tidal waves and wind energy [1]. In addition, mangrove forest also function as vital coastal resource for many human being application and some mangrove species even have the ability to use as medicine treatment in certain disease. Furthermore, various forestry products obtained from mangrove such as timber, charcoal, and firewood contribute a lot of profit to countries income. Therefore mangroves are considered as the most productivity diverse ecosystem on the planet which has important ecological, environmental, biological, medical and economic values. Due to the anthropogenic activities by human being, many mangrove areas has been cleared and cut down for the development of aquaculture, residential, industrial area, resource exploitation, harvesting for fuel, food and medicine. Since last decade, the mangrove areas around the world were degrading and receding at an alarming rate and this already affects the balance in ecosystem. Forestry department and related organizations has been put in effort to study on the mapping and monitoring of mangrove wetlands, analysis of various satellite sensor data to differentiate mangrove zonation, deforestation sites, spectral reflectance studies on mangroves ecosystem using ground-based instruments, development of GIS based mangrove wetland database for the sustainable mangrove management and restoration. In order to control the deforestation and monitor the mangrove forest for restoration efforts, application of remote sensing technique provide an alternative way to aid in the monitoring process. Mapping of mangrove forest was common with remote sensing as this method is accurate, fast, cost reasonable and reduce human energy as compare to the conventional way which is time consuming [1,2]. Identification and classification of various environmental features especially in plant species from remote sensing require the understanding of feature’s spectral properties and response in different part of the electromagnetic spectrum region. The knowledge of spectral response of an objects and materials form a basis to determine the characteristic of an objects and materials. The study of spectral signatures provides the choices of selecting specific bandwidths or spectral bands for differentiating various environmental features. In order to interpret remotely sensed data more meaningfully, it is important for us to have a good understanding of the absorption and reflectance properties of our investigated features and other parameters that would influence them [3]. Proceeding of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Space Science and Communication (IconSpace) 12-13 July 2011, Penang, Malaysia 978-1-4577-0564-9/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 147