Data/Software

In this study, we use imagery acquired by the Landsat series of satellites to document the changes in the shoreline of the Indian and Bangladesh Sundarbans. The Landsat series of satellites provides the longest continuous record of satellite based Earth observations from 1972 till date. For this study we analyze imagery from the year 2000 acquired by the Landsat 7 Satellite with the Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) Sensor, Bands 1-8 including thermal bands 61 and 62 and panchromatic band 8, Spectral Range 0.45-2.35 μm (bands 1,2,3,4,5,7), 10.4-12.5 μm (bands 61 and 62), and 0.52-0.9 μm (band 8), Pixel resolution 30 m (band 61 and 62 = 60 m and band 8 =15 m). For the year 2014, the Landsat 8 Satellte was used, with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), with Bands 1-11 including Thermal Bands 10 and 11 and Panchromatic Band 8. The spatial resolution for Bands 1-7 and 9 is 30 m, for Band 8 is 15m and for Bands 10 and 11 is 100m. The spectral range is 0.43-2.29 μm for Bands 1-9 and 10.60-12.51 μm for Bands 10 and 11.

Details of the datasets used for spatial analyses in this study are listed in table 1 below.

Year	Landsat	Path	Row	Producer	Date of Acquisition
2000	Landsat 7	138	45	USGS	2000-11-17
2014	Landsat 8	138	45	USGS	2014-02-01

Table 1. Landsat datasets used for qualitative and quantitative spatial analyses of changing shoreline of the Sundarbans. The datasets used in the study were produced by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and were downloaded from the Earth Explorer website at http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/. Both the datasets had UTM map projections and WGS84 datum.

Geographic Information Systems Software

           

All qualitative and quantitative spatial analyses including image processing and enhancement was carried out using open source Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS GIS) software. The software is available for download at www.grass.fbk.eu for various operating systems and platforms.