Shoreline change on nine reef islands over a seven-decade period

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Autori principali: Mann, Thomas, Westphal, Hildegard
Natura: Dataset Open Access
Lingua:en
Pubblicazione: PANGAEA 2014
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author Mann, Thomas
Westphal, Hildegard
author_facet Mann, Thomas
Westphal, Hildegard
collection Datos científicos de ciencias marinas y ambientales
contents Atoll islands are subject to a variety of processes that influence their geomorphological development. Analysis of historical shoreline changes using remotely sensed images has become an efficient approach to both quantify past changes and estimate future island response. However, the detection of long-term changes in beach width is challenging mainly for two reasons: first, data availability is limited for many remote Pacific islands. Second, beach environments are highly dynamic and strongly influenced by seasonal or episodic shoreline oscillations. Consequently, remote-sensing studies on beach morphodynamics of atoll islands deal with dynamic features covered by a low sampling frequency. Here we present a study of beach dynamics for nine islands on Takú Atoll, Papua New Guinea, over a seven-decade period. A considerable chronological gap between aerial photographs and satellite images was addressed by applying a new method that reweighted positions of the beach limit by identifying “outlier” shoreline positions. On top of natural beach variability observed along the reweighted beach sections, we found that one third of the analyzed islands show a statistically significant decrease in reweighted beach width since 1943. The total loss of beach area for all islands corresponds to 44% of the initial beach area. Variable shoreline trajectories suggest that changes in beach width on Takú Atoll are dependent on local control (that is, human activity and longshore sediment transport). Our results show that remote imagery with a low sampling frequency may be sufficient to characterize prominent morphological changes in planform beach configuration of reef islands.
format Dataset Open Access
id pangaea_https___doi_org_10_1594_PANGAEA_839181
institution PANGAEA
language en
publishDate 2014
publisher PANGAEA
record_format pangaea
spellingShingle Shoreline change on nine reef islands over a seven-decade period
Mann, Thomas
Westphal, Hildegard
Center for Marine Environmental Sciences; Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research; MARUM; ZMT
Atoll islands are subject to a variety of processes that influence their geomorphological development. Analysis of historical shoreline changes using remotely sensed images has become an efficient approach to both quantify past changes and estimate future island response. However, the detection of long-term changes in beach width is challenging mainly for two reasons: first, data availability is limited for many remote Pacific islands. Second, beach environments are highly dynamic and strongly influenced by seasonal or episodic shoreline oscillations. Consequently, remote-sensing studies on beach morphodynamics of atoll islands deal with dynamic features covered by a low sampling frequency. Here we present a study of beach dynamics for nine islands on Takú Atoll, Papua New Guinea, over a seven-decade period. A considerable chronological gap between aerial photographs and satellite images was addressed by applying a new method that reweighted positions of the beach limit by identifying “outlier” shoreline positions. On top of natural beach variability observed along the reweighted beach sections, we found that one third of the analyzed islands show a statistically significant decrease in reweighted beach width since 1943. The total loss of beach area for all islands corresponds to 44% of the initial beach area. Variable shoreline trajectories suggest that changes in beach width on Takú Atoll are dependent on local control (that is, human activity and longshore sediment transport). Our results show that remote imagery with a low sampling frequency may be sufficient to characterize prominent morphological changes in planform beach configuration of reef islands.
title Shoreline change on nine reef islands over a seven-decade period
topic Center for Marine Environmental Sciences; Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research; MARUM; ZMT
url https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.839181