An original scheme to detect shoreline changes using multi-temporal satellite images and tidal measurements is presented here. First, the basic idea behind this investigation is to reconstruct a reference digital terrain model(DTM) for tideland areas from a set of SPOT satellite images sampled over a short period. Each image corresponds to a tidal measurement. Then, the shoreline, as interpreted from a historical satellite image, is compared with one traced from the reference DTM, according to the associated tidal elevations. Experimental results indicate that the area error of the test sand barriers ranges between 7.6% and 12.5%.