Monitoring suspended sediment distribution using Landsat TM/ETM+ data in coastal waters of Seamangeum, Korea

Since the tide embankment construction started in 1991, the coastal environment in and around the Saemangeum area has undergone changes rapidly, there is a need for monitoring the environmental change in this region. Owing to high temporal and spatial heterogeneity of the coastal ecosystem and processes as well as the expense with traditional filed sampling at discrete locations, satellite remote sensing measurements offer a unique perspective on mapping a large region simultaneously because of the synoptic and repeat coverage and that quantitative algorithms used for estimating constituents' concentration in the coastal environments. Thus, the main objectives of the present study are to analyze the retrieved Suspended Sediment (SS) pattern to predict changes after the commencement of the tide embankment construction work in 1991. This is accomplished with a series of the Landsat TM/ETM+ imagery acquired from 1985-2002 (a total of 18 imageries). Instead of a simple empirical algorithm, we implement an analytical SS algorithm, developed by Ahn et al. (2003), which is especially developed for estimating SS concentration (SSC) in Case-2 waters. The results show that there is a significant change in SS pattern, which is mainly influenced by the tide and tidal height after the construction of the embankment work. As the construction progressed, the distribution pattern of SS has greatly changed, and the rate of SS concentration in the gap area of the dyke of post-construction has significantly increased.