Digital satellite remote sensing for terrestrial coastal zone management

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:The unique and often fragile environment of the coastal zone is placed under increasingpressure by human development. It is expected that three quarters of the world'spopulation will be living within 60km of the coast by the year 2020. Thorough planningand management are required to prevent coastal degradation. In South Africa, coastalmanagement efforts are being promoted through the implementation of a White Paper forsustainable coastal development. A Coastal Decision Support System (CDSS) wasdeveloped to empower local authorities to demarcate and manage sensitive coastal areas bygiving them access to relevant botanical and physical information.Land cover/use information for the CDSS was previously mapped manually from hardcopyaerial photography. This method was found to be time-consuming and costly. This studyinvestigated the potential for digital satellite imagery as primary source of data forpopulating the land cover/use information of the CDSS. A methodology was designedutilising semi-supervised isodata clustering for extracting relevant information for a studyarea covering 40x20km of coast along the southern coastal sector of South Africa. Digitalmapping of SPOT 4 multispectral satellite data was used successfully to map landcover/use information such as wetlands, coastal lakes, dune vegetation, urban areas, forestplantations, natural forest and agricultural areas.A cost comparison was also made between the digital mapping method from satelliteimagery used in this research project and the manual mapping from aerial photography.Digital mapping from satellite imagery was found to be more cost-effective in terms ofboth data and human resource costs. The method outlined and discussed in the researchproject should provide sufficient guidance for future application of the techniques inpopulating the CDSS with land cover/use information.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University