MAPPING OF THE NIGERIAN COASTLINE, USING SATELLITE IMAGERY (ASAR)

This thesis highlights the common problems affecting the Nigerian coastal area and some of the suspected causes of these problems. The primary aim of this thesis is to enlighten the Nigerian government on the usefulness of satellite remote sensing techniques in the mapping of her coast, and there by encouraging her to invest more in remote sensing; and particularly with the recent launching of a Nigerian owned satellite. To achieve this aim, a practical attempt was made in processing and analysing remote sensing imagery of the Nigerian coast. The imagery was obtained from the CoastChart consortium database. Though there are several commercial packages associated with the processing of remote sensing imagery, Erdas Imagine version 8.7 software was used in this project; basically because of its quality and availability to the author at the time of this research. A cost comparison between satellite remote sensing techniques and other conventional techniques used for small scale mapping showed that satellite based remote sensing systems are relatively cheaper than the other mapping methods, particularly when the coarseness of the result does not reasonably affect the purpose of the mapping. It was not possible to obtain ground control points by the conventional land surveying method, rather remote sensing method was used to acquire the desired number of ground control points that were used for the georeferencing.FACULTY OF SCIENCE