An Approach for Estimating Border Length in Marine Coasts From MODIS Data

Abstract

The development of data approximation methods from coarse spatial resolution images is gaining increasing interest in the research community. This letter aims to extend and validate a developed methodology for estimating border length of diverse marine coastlines from coarse spatial resolution images like Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) by using fractal attributes and its error behavior. The accuracy of MODIS-based estimates and the reliability of the method to predict coastline length measurements by extrapolation was evaluated using Landsat 8 over different coastline types. It is shown that with our method, 250-m MODIS images are adequate for estimating coastline lengths with a precision equivalent to standard linear measurements performed on 30-m resolution imagery, with average errors between 3% and 18% for straight and complex coasts, respectively. These results indicate that an underestimation error, occurring in rugged and complex coasts, is more frequent and significant than overestimation occurring in smooth and straight coasts.