Browse

The Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) has proved to be a valuable tool for evaluating the potential for coastal change in a given area. The CVI ranks the following variables in terms of their physical contribution to sea level-related coastal change: geomorphology, regional coastal slope, rate of relative sea-level change, the rate of historical shoreline change, mean tidal range and mean significant wave height. They are termed coastal risk variables and the rankings for each variable are combined and an index va...

The Earth’s weather and climate are the result of the redistribution of heat. The major source of heat to the surface of the Earth is the sun, principally through incoming visible radiation most of which is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The ocean redistributes this radiation and the atmosphere with the excess radiated back into space as longer wavelength, infrared radiation. Clouds and other gases, primarily water vapour and carbon dioxide, absorb the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and ...

Coastal zones are exposed to many dynamic processes that usually cause changes on long and short time spans. Erosion, sediment transport, environmental pollution and coastal development are among the most severe processes impacting the coastal zones. Monitoring of shoreline change needs a long-term commitment and objective decisions on shoreline change are usually made based on shoreline and erosion monitoring data that are usually acquired cumulatively over a long period of time. The purpose of the present work i...

Shoreline change rate is the most critical feature of the coastal area because it reveals future harmful impacts driven by long-term climate changes and episodic events. Since the coastal zone is one of a nation’s greatest environmental and economic assets, the best methodology, as far as accuracy is concerned, estimating the rate of change of a shoreline is an open question. The accuracy both of the geoinformation used and the computed change rate is of crucial importance. The purpose of the present paper is to...