Saemangeum, located on the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula, is a 40 100 ha ongoing "reclamation" project in South Korea, concomitance damming the estuaries of the Mangyong and Dongjin rivers, replacing vast tidal land and sea-shallows with land and a huge freshwater reservoir. In 1991, the South Korean government announced that a seawall (dyke) would be constructed to link two headlands just south of the South Korean industrial port city of Gunsan and Buan, 270 kilometers southwest of Seoul, to create 400 km² of farmland and a freshwater reservoir. Started in 1991, the 33km long seawall was finally completed on April 2006. Chlorophyll-a concentration, Suspended solids (SS), Sea surface temperature (SST), and turbidity are four important water quality variables, among other environmental factors such as salinity and pH, for tidal land production in Saemangeum. Change detection of the SST and SS during Saemangeum seawall construction was carried out by using LANDSAT TM and ETM imagery data. The spatial and temporal distribution of SST and SS are estimated and mapped with various degrees of success in Saemangeum area. Here we assessed the potential of these data to derive water quality parameters in a reclaimed estuary environment. We found that the evolution of the estuary, coastline, delta, and change detection results derived from LANDSAT TM and ETM images recorded in 1989, 2001 and 2008, respectively. Due to the limitations of image acquisition and noise, many researchers have employed the image processing technique to improve satellite data in order to assess water quality. The interpolation approach is a useful tool for the analyses and assessment on SST and SS on the basis of available satellite imagery data. Ordinary kriging (OK) were used to improve the SST and SS images in the study area. Results indicate that sedimentary transport, SS, and SST in Saemangeum has significantly changed during the past 20 years, with a dramatic increase in the amount of sediment moved by the river, and deposited in the estuary and in river mouth. The analysis of the spatial structure showed that SST and SS in the study area were spatially correlated and therefore spatial interpolation was valid. Also, we recognized that LANDSAT TM and ETM data have sufficient sensitivity for estuary environmental monitoring.

Date Published: 4 November 2010
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 7831, Earth Resources and Environmental Remote Sensing/GIS Applications, 78311F (4 November 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.865155

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7831:
Earth Resources and Environmental Remote Sensing/GIS Applications
Ulrich Michel; Daniel L. Civco, Editor(s)