Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery is considered the best approach to acquire high-resolution data over a large area in a short time, such as in the case of coastal wetlands comprising small-sized patches of perennial plants. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have used UAV imagery to quantitatively estimate blue carbon in coastal wetlands. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate the area-wide carbon stocks accumulated in halophyte habitats through the case studies of the southern coastal wetlands in South Korea using UAV imagery. Accordingly, object-based image analysis was used to identify the spatial distribution of major halophytes based on the spectral reflectance derived from multispectral UAV images. Elemental analysis (EA) was performed to estimate the content of organic carbon accumulated in individual halophytes, and the halophyte communities identified in the case study area were confirmed to have accumulated 20.80 MgC of blue carbon. These results demonstrate that applying EA to UAV images can be an innovative method to solve the spatial uncertainty encountered in the monitoring of blue carbon in existing field-based surveys and traditional remote sensing.

无人机（UAV）图像被认为是在短时间内在大范围内获取高分辨率数据的最佳方法，例如在沿海湿地包含多年生植物小块的情况下。但是，据我们所知，以前没有研究使用无人机图像来定量估算沿海湿地中的蓝色碳。因此，本研究旨在通过使用无人机图像对韩国南部沿海湿地进行案例研究，估算盐生植物生境中积累的全区碳储量。因此，基于多目标无人机图像的光谱反射率，基于对象的图像分析用于识别主要盐生植物的空间分布。进行了元素分析（EA）来估算单个盐生植物中积累的有机碳含量，并确定在案例研究区域中确定的盐生植物群落中已积累了20.80 MgC的蓝碳。这些结果表明，将EA应用于无人机图像可以成为解决现有现场调查和传统遥感中监测蓝碳时遇到的空间不确定性的一种创新方法。