Application of Remote Sensing and GIS technology for monitoring coastal changes in estuary area of the Red river system, Vietnam

Coastline is the most dynamic part of seascape since its shape is affected by various factors. Coastal zone is an area with immense geological, geomorphological and ecological interest. Monitoring coastal change is very important for safe navigation, coastal resource management. This paper shows a result of monitoring coastal morphological changes using Remote Sensing and GIS. Study was carried out to obtain intensity of erosion, deposition and sand bar movement in the Red River Delta. Satellite images of ALOS/AVNIR-2 and Landsat were used for the monitoring of coastal morphological changes over the period of 1975 to 2009. Band rationing and threshold technique was used for the coastline extraction. Tidal levels at the time of image acquisition varied from -0.89m to 2.87m. Therefore, coastline from another image at a different tidal level in the same year was considered to get the corrected coastline by interpolation technique. A series of points were generated along the coastal line from 1975 image and were established as reference points to see the change in later periods. The changes were measured in Euclidean distances from these reference points. Positive values represented deposition to the sea and negative values are erosion. The result showed that the Red river delta area expanded to the sea 3500m in Red river mouth, and 2873m in Thai Binh river mouth from 1975 to 2009. The erosion process occurred continuously from 1975 up to now with the average magnitude 23.77m/year from 1975 to 1989 and 7.85m/year from 2001 to 2009 in Giao Thuy area. From 1975 to 2009, total 1095.2ha of settlement area was eroded by sea. On the other hand, land expanded to the sea in 4786.24ha of mangrove and 1673.98ha of aquaculture.