Dynamic Monitoring of Coastline in the Yellow River Delta by Remote Sensing

The Yellow River is well-known for its highest sediment contents of all rivers in the world. Due to the huge sediment to the coast, the Yellow River Delta is in a state of continuous dynamic change. The most recent shift occurred in 1976, and a new sub-delta is being created since then. This paper describes the method and technology for monitoring the coastline change of the Yellow River Delta using remote sensing. The multi-temporal Landsat and other satellite images were used as the monitoring data source. The images were registered to the high precision GIS database, and they were matched each other and matched with the database. All the images have the same coordinate system. A mean high water (MHW) model was developed for extracting coastlines from remote sensing images. 20 coastlines were extracted from different years. The result shows that a new territory of 330km2 was formed in the present estuary area from 1976 to 2000. At the same time, a territory of 137km2 was eroded in the Diaokou estuary area to the north of the Yellow River Delta. In conclusion, it is the substantial foundation for the water and sedimentation of the Yellow River to shape the delta. That is, it is the essential factor leading to coastline evolution.