The Use of Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery to Assist in the Monitoring of the Time Evolution of Challenging Coastal Environments: A Case Study of the Basilicata Coast

This study focuses on a very complex environment, namely the Ionian coast of the Basilicata region, Southern Italy, which includes different kinds of beaches, river mouths and built-up areas. This complex environment is used as a test case to analyze the time variability of the coastline using measu...

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Published inEnvironments (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 10; no. 12; p. 212
Main Authors Ferrentino, Emanuele, Famiglietti, Nicola Angelo, Nunziata, Ferdinando, Inserra, Giovanna, Buono, Andrea, Moschillo, Raffaele, Memmolo, Antonino, Colangelo, Gerardo, Vicari, Annamaria, Migliaccio, Maurizio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.12.2023
Subjects
Accuracy
Anthropomorphism
coastal areas
Coastal environments
coastline extraction
Coasts
Deposition
Economic activity
Global positioning systems
GPS
LIDAR
Monitoring
polarimetry
Radar
Radar imaging
Remote sensing
River mouth
Rivers
Sediments
Soil erosion
Sustainable development
Synthetic aperture radar
Italy
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Summary:This study focuses on a very complex environment, namely the Ionian coast of the Basilicata region, Southern Italy, which includes different kinds of beaches, river mouths and built-up areas. This complex environment is used as a test case to analyze the time variability of the coastline using measurements that were remotely sensed by the satellite European Copernicus Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission. First, the accuracy of the coastline, extracted by the SAR, is discussed with respect to finer-spatial-resolution drone-based light detection and ranging (LIDAR) measurements. Then, a time series of SAR dual-polarimetric measurements acquired by the European Copernicus mission is used to discuss the time variability of the coastline of the area of interest in a time period spanning from 2015 to 2021. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the SAR-based coastline is better than 15 m, which is reasonably good precision for monitoring the erosion/accretion processes that characterize the area of interest at a moderate scale. The estimated time variability of the extracted coastline suggests a dominant erosion process, which is always within 60 m.
ISSN:2076-3298
2076-3298
DOI:10.3390/environments10120212