ANALYSIS OF THE SHORELINE POSITION EXTRACTED FROM LANDSAT TM AND ETM+ IMAGERY

Abstract. A statistical analysis of the results obtained by the tool SELI (Shoreline Extraction from Landsat Imagery) is made in order to characterise the medium and long term period changes occurring on beaches. The analysis is based on the hypothesis that intraannual shifts of coastline positions hover around an average position, which would be significant when trying to set these medium and long term trends. Fluctuations around this average are understood as the effect of short-term changes -variations related to sea level, wave run-up, and the immediate morphological beach profile settings of the incident waves- whilst the alterations of the average position will obey changes relating to the global sedimentary harmony of the analysed beach segment. The goal of this study is to assess the validity of extracted Landsat shorelines knowing whether the intrinsic error could alter the position of the computed mean annual shoreline or if it is balanced out between the successive averaged images. Two periods are stablished for the temporal analysis in the area according to the availability of other data taken from high precision sources. Statistical tests performed to compare samples (Landsat versus high accuracy) indicate that the two sources of data provide similar information regarding annual means; coastal behaviour and dynamics, thereby verifying Landsat shorelines as useful data for evolutionary studies.