SATELLITE-BASED LAND/SEA CONTINUUM: AN APPLICATION TO MONITOR THE SAINT LOUIS COAST (SENEGAL, WEST AFRICA)

Abstract

Abstract. The historical city of Saint Louis in Senegal is situated on the Langue de Barbarie sand spit and is particularly prone to erosion: buildings have collapsed and population relocated due to shoreline retreat. At Saint Louis understanding the beach-morphodynamics is essential, and relies on the monitoring of nearshore topography and bathymetry. Remote sensing techniques relying on very high resolution (sub metric) satellites such as the Pleiades constellation and Planet now offer new perspectives in coastal monitoring and engineering. Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of the emerged part of the beach, topography, and the submerged nearshore bathymetry can be obtained using respectively (tri-)stereogrammetry, and depth inversion through wave kinematics or/and colour based methods. These methods offered promising results (Almeida et al., 2019, Taveneau et al., 2021, Almar et al., 2019a) in previous studies when applied to Pleiades satellite. This work showcases a DEM derived from a 3-images (dT ≃ 9.5s) Pleiades acquisition in March 2020 and covering the key topography/bathymetry morphological continuum. Root mean squared errors of about 5 m for bathymetry and 0.9 m for topography are obtained. To limit erosion at Saint Louis urban beaches, the construction of a protection structure has begun in late 2020. Here, satellite DEM is used to monitor the efficiency of the structure and its downstream impact along the sand spit.