Remote sensing for mapping surface water quality in coastal area of Aceh, Indonesia: Sendimentation effects of the December 2004 tsunami

The 2004 Asian tsunami was the worst tsunami disaster in the history. The tsunami caused by the huge Sumatra-Andaman earthquake devastated the shores of Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. The present of tsunami carry a large portion of possibility in the damaging the environmental as well as in degradation of coastal area of Aceh, Indonesia. Remote sensing data have been widely used in the environmental studies like land cover change, flood observation, environmental pollution (air and water) monitoring. The objective of this study was to test the feasibility study for mapping and monitoring the surface water in the coastal area of Aceh by using Landsat TM satellite data after the disaster of tsunami hit on 2004. The implemented algorithm is based on the reflectance model, which is a function of the inherent optical characteristic of water, and it was related to the concentration of its constituents. In this study, the algorithm used for monitoring water quality in the coastal area of Aceh was based on the algorithm developed from the study on Penang Island in Malaysia. Previously algorithm revealed that it had given a high of correlation coefficient (R) and low root means square deviations (RMSD) values. Finally, the total suspended solid (TSS) map was generated based on the algorithm developed. The study shows that the Landsat TM satellite data has the potentiality to be used for sediment studies over a large study area.