| Imaging the Internal Structures and Future Threats of the Sand Dunes along the Northwestern Coast of Nile Delta Using SAR |
| Paper ID : 1150-ICRSSSA |
| Authors: |
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Rabab Ramadan Mohammad *1, Ehab Hassan2, Mostafa A. El-Asser3, Ashraf Yahia3, Ahmed Gaber4 1NARSS (National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences) 2Ain Shams University 3Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University 4Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Port-Said University |
| Abstract: |
| Although the coastal dunes are protecting the coastal cities and their infrastructures from the rise in the sea level and storms, they might threat and hide the surrounding developmental projects. Thus, imaging the internal anatomy and dynamics of these coastal dunes are very crucial to protect the environment. In this study, the Optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images were processed and integrated with field observations and surveys to extract information about the past, current, and future behavior of coastal dunes in the Nile Delta-Northwest sector. A conventional change detection method using the supervised Landsat-8 images for the years 2015&2017 were generated to show a rapid change in the sand dune cover, where the high-resolution images of Google Earth were used to digitize the dune crests and measure its encroachment rate, which has been reached about 4m/year with the NW–SE direction. The full-polarimetric ALOS/PALSAR-2 images from the years 2015 and 2017 show very low coherence for the sand dunes, which means these dunes are dynamic, where the changes in both power and phase imbalances of different dune fields during the investigated years (2015&2017) show high differences in values, which reached 40 dB and 0.06 degrees, respectively. Finally, the extracted radar facies from the field survey show two successive groups of coastal sand dunes show a decline in the heavy minerals content to a level that might threaten the properties at the shoreline due to sea level rise and wave storms if mitigation actions are not taken place soon. |
| Keywords: |
| Remote Sensing; SAR; Internal anatomy; Future threats; Coastal Dunes; Egypt. |
| Status : Paper Accepted (Oral Presentation) |
