Study of sediment distribution in the area of the Panuco river plume by means of remote sensing

Abstract. The zone of Tampico-Altamira to the north-east of Mexico has undergone considerable industrial development in the last 10 years. A great number of industries discharge their waste into the Panuco River and the sea, contaminating and altering the ecological balance of the area. Employing digital image analysis techniques and field data, two dates of thematic images in which changes in the spatial distribution of suspended solids from industrial discharges, were prepared. From the statistical properties of the defined classes, the best principal components were selected and were used as input to an Isodata clustering algorithm. Such components were derived from the band groups of the visible and the infrared. The images employed are from Landsat-5 (TM): of October 1990, and October 1992. The resulting classification was edited in such a way as to include the original image in the part corresponding to the mainland, and keeping the segmentation in sediment levels only in the coastal and lacunar zone. The images were georeferenced in UTM coordinates. The results show a complex system of hydrodynamic interaction between the Panuco River, the sea and the coastal lagoons.