Detection of Shifts in the Southeastern Coastline of the Caspian Sea with Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ Images in 1977, 1987 and 2001

Abstract

Journal of Coastal Zone Management AbstractShorelines are the most important linear phenomena on earth's surface that have a dynamic nature. Thus, favorite coastal management and environmental protection towards sustainable development requires the extraction of the coastline and its changes. For this purpose, coastal zone monitoring in an appropriate time context is of great importance. As one of reliable and rather accurate sources, remote sensing data and satellite imagery in different periods are used for investigation and interpretation of shoreline changes and quantitative measurements. In this study, we tried to apply a new method to determine the shoreline changes using remote sensing and geographic information system. This method possesses simplicity and has acceptable results as well and is able to control and evaluate the results of the research process and its reliability is approved. Since the results of coastline changes are considered as the fundamental basis for analysis and other related applications, the data integrity and no other possible errors are essential. To control the accuracy of the extracted data on cross sections perpendicular to the coastline, statistical tests of sample, median absolute deviation, Z-Score and box plot was used. The results, confirms that the extracted data have no errors.