Distances Between Wave Crests Obtained From Satellite Images

The study of sea wavelengths and their variations is of vital importance for conservation project of coral reefs and coastal areas. However, to date this issue has never been treated from the point of view of image processing. In this work, we propose a simple strategy to calculate the distance between wave crests from satellite images, obtaining results that were compared with previous studies with more developed instruments on the calculation of wavelengths. In fact, our work goes a little further, because from the calculation of the wavelength we propose a strategy associated with the wave theory to estimate the kinetic energy dissipated when the wave fronts cross the coral reef. In addition, we use the wavelength to calculate the speed of the wave fronts. The well-known Gamma filter, Prewitt gradient and Gaussian binarization are used as processing techniques.