Abstract

This study presents work to utilize multi synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to map the rate of spit change along the east coast of Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. Multi temporal SAR data are involved in ERS-1 and RADARSAT -1 SAR data. Two algorithms have implemented to extract the spit‘s boundary from multi-SAR data which are Lee and Enhance Lee algorithms. The two algorithms are applied to multi-SAR data with window kernel sizes of 3 x 3, 5 x 5, and 7 x 7, respectively. The rate of spit change is estimated using the traditional method of historical vectors overlaying technique which were acquired from multi-SAR data by manual digitizing. This study shows that Enhance Lee algorithm with kernel window size of 5x5 provides better speckles reduction. It is interesting too to find that the spit has dominated by accretion since 1993 to 2003 which is 7 months/year. It can be concluded that the multi-SAR data can be used for mapping coastal geomorphology change in tropical area such as Malaysia.

Key words: Lee algorithm, Enhance Lee algorithm, synthetic aperture radar, coastal geomorphology, spit.