Derived data product DEA High and Low Tide Imagery

  • See Australia’s coast at high and low tide

  • Get clean, noise-free data for coastal applications

satellite image of coast and water showing protruding sandy island

Picturing the ups and downs

Digital Earth Australia (DEA) High and Low Tide Imagery provides cloud-free imagery mosaics of Australia’s coast, estuaries and reefs at low and high tide, calculating the geometric median of the highest and lowest 20% of tides seen by Landsat satellites over decades

aerial photo of long sandy beach and headland showing shallow reef

See Australia's coasts, estuaries and reefs at low and high tide, without the visual noise of clouds, breaking water and sun-glint

aerial photo of Darwin harbour showing sand exposed at low tide and town in background

We’ve paired our archive of Landsat satellite imagery with regional tidal models, allowing imagery to be sorted by tide height as well as date

What can high and low tides reveal?

  • Valuable snapshots of the coastline at different biophysical states

  • Information for research into how coastal erosion and sea level rise affects intertidal organisms

  • New data for coastal habitat mapping and machine learning applications

Man in floppy hat and t-shirt uses yellow rule tool to measure depth on tidal mudflat

Imagery for impact Reading the tides for threatened shorebirds

The DEA Intertidal Extents product is contributing to estuarine habitat monitoring in northern Australia

Related resources

four-panels of coastal imagery showing gradual change

Journal article

'Generating Continental Scale Pixel-Based Surface Reflectance Composites in Coastal Regions with the Use of a Multi-Resolution Tidal Model’

Journal article Read the paper
Shallow reef aerial image

Mapping the Reef

Intertidal modelling was the missing link in mapping the seafloor of the entire Great Barrier Reef

Mapping the Reef Learn more
Green and white sandy landmass protruding from blue ocean

Our suite of coastal products

DEA Coastlines, DEA Intertidal and DEA High and Low Tide imagery provide new perspectives on critical coastal environments.  

Our suite of coastal products Browse the products