MAPPING OF VARIATIONS IN THE ANAPA BAY BAR LANDSCAPE-MORPHOLOGIC STRUCTURE WITH HIGH-RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGES

Abstract

The Anapa bay bar is at present one of only a few sand beaches in the Black Sea coastal zone of Russia. The bay bar includes three main belts – beach, dune belt and hillocky sands. A strong anthropogenic impact is observed: the landscape-morphological structure of the dune belt is disturbed, so monitoring of the bay bar is essential . For this purpose we had compiled a series of maps of landscape-morphological structure for the Blagoveschensk and Vityazevo-Anapa parts of the bay bar using high-resolution images from WorldView-2 satellite. Interpretation of stereo-pairs of multitemporal images was carried out at the scale of 1:2000, while a series of maps was compiled at the scale of 1:5000. Twelve sites with different landscape-morphologic structure are covered by these maps and characterized. The structure depends on geomorphologic neighborhood (adjacency to the cliff or to the lagoon) and aspect to wind direction, but mainly on the degree of anthropogenic influence. So the dune belt has been formed at the beach in some areas, but in other areas the dune belt is located behind the beach, or sometimes has disappeared. The compiled maps clearly reflect these variations and show their mainly anthropogenic origin. These maps will help to investigate adaptive solutions for Anapa bay bar conservation and protection.