Application of Remote Sensing Images for Analysis of Coastline Changes- A Case Study

Coastline changes along 4 km of Terengganu coastline, Peninsular Malaysia, has been detected by simple application of satellite images and the changes are
related computationally to the environmental factors. The
coastline stretch, near Sungai Besut, is formed by a fairly
straight shoreline but is interrupted along 400 m by a river
mouth. The area is protected by two breakwaters embracing
the river mouth as well as by four groins to the north west of the river mouth. On the one hand, four high-resolution (2.5 m) satellite images were explored to detect the erosion or accretion rate along the shoreline. Hourly tide levels were taken into account to adjust the apparent waterline before the sediment volume of the coastline change was extracted from the overlaid images. On the other hand, the longshore sediment transport was estimated using empirical CERC formula. Comparison of the estimations from these two methods was made. It was shown that the analysis of the images backed by preliminary field data provides for a reliable detection of the past trends of coastline changes. The finding is promising in that the technique could project the changes into near-to-intermediate
future as a safe estimation method for conceptual design
purposes