Video-Based Detection of Shorelines at Complex Meso-Macro Tidal Beaches

Remote video imagery is widely used to acquire measurements of intertidal topography by means of shoreline detection, but, up to now, problems of accuracy were still encountered in the challenging case of energetic waves in nonuniform, meso macro tidal environments. Unique, simultaneous, video-based and global positioning system (GPS)-based measurements of shoreline were undertaken at Truc Vert (France), a beach with such characteristics. An innovative video method, referred to herein as the Minimum Shoreline Variability (MSV) method, was developed to cope with highly variable spatiotemporal shoreline properties. The comparison of video-based and GPS-derived shoreline data sets showed that using images averaged over short periods (30 s), rather than the traditionally used 10-min averaged images, significantly improved the accuracy of shoreline determination. A local video-derived, swash-based shoreline correction was also developed to correct for the MSV error, which was found to be linearly correlated to local swash length. By combining shorter time-averaged images and video derived local swash correction factors, the horizontal root mean square error associated with MSV shorelines was reduced to 1.2 m, which is equivalent to errors reported at more uniform, microtidal, and less-energetic beaches.