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Research Paper | Applied Physics | Volume 15 Issue 5, May 2026 | Pages: 1377 - 1383 | India
Estimating Fractal Dimension of Indian Coastlines Using Box-Counting and Divider Methods
Abstract: Fractal dimension provides a quantitative way to describe coastline roughness and motivates the classic coastline paradox. In this work, five Indian coastline regions (Gulf of Kutch, Sundarbans, Konkan, Chilika, and Palk Strait) are analyzed using box-counting and Richardson divider methods. Coastline vectors from Natural Earth (1:10m) are clipped to fixed bounding boxes, projected to Web Mercator (selected for uniform pixel spacing within each bounded region, with the caveat that inter-regional distance comparisons are not performed), rasterized at 512-2048 px, and converted to edge masks. Box-counting dimension is estimated from log-log slopes with 128 random grid-origin bootstraps to obtain 95% confidence intervals, and a two-segment piecewise fit is used to identify the best-fit linear scaling region. Segmented box-counting dimensions range from 1.084 to 1.467, with scaling bands of 2.9-4.3 octaves. Divider-based dimensions are consistently lower than segmented box-counting estimates. The resulting pipeline provides a reproducible, uncertainty-quantified approach for comparing coastline roughness across regions and measurement scales.
Keywords: Fractal dimension, Fractal geometry, Coastline paradox, Box-counting method, Richardson divider method, Indian coastline, Geospatial analysis
How to Cite?: Neer Dubey, "Estimating Fractal Dimension of Indian Coastlines Using Box-Counting and Divider Methods", Volume 15 Issue 5, May 2026, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), Pages: 1377-1383, https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=SR26521161446, DOI: https://dx.dx.doi.org/10.21275/SR26521161446