The Analysis of Tidal Channel Development Using Fractal

The tidal channel is influenced by sediment type, grain size, grain composition and tidal currents in tidal flat. The development of tidal channel including density, shape and order can be used to analyze the characteristics of tidal channel. The quantitative investigation to the tidal channel is insufficiency. In this paper, we represented the fractal analysis method according to the quantitatively analysis in tidal channel and compared with the different intertidal channel patterns. The tidal channel was extracted from the IKONOS image of the southern part of the Kanghwa-do. We used the Box-counting method to estimate fractal dimensions for each tidal channel. As a result, the fractal dimension values (D) were 1.31 in the southern Kanghwa-Do. Linear pattern and less dense channel development area had low D values (from 1.0563 to 1.0672). Dendritic pattern and dense channel development area had high D values (from 1.2550 to 1.3016). In other words, fractal dimension values had difference about 0.2 values according to the characteristic of tidal channel development. We concluded that fractal analysis can be able to quantitatively classification in tidal channel.