Abstract
The coastline situation reflects socioeconomic development and ecological environment in coastal zones. Analyzing coastline changes clarifies the current coastline situation and provides a scientific basis for making environmental protection policies, especially for coastlines with significant human interference. As human activities become more intense, coastline types and their dynamic changes become more complicated, which needs more detailed identification of coastlines. High spatial resolution images can help provide detailed large spatial coverage at high resolution information on coastal zones. This study aims to map the position and status of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) coastline using an NDWI threshold method based on 2 m Gaofen-1/Ziyuan-3 imagery and analyze coastline change and coastline type distribution characteristics. The results showed that natural and artificial coastlines in the YRD region accounted for 42.73% and 57.27% in 2013 and 41.56% and 58.44% in 2018, respectively. The coastline generally advanced towards the sea, causing a land area increase of 475.62 km2. The changes in the YRD coastline mainly resulted from a combination of large-scale artificial construction and natural factors such as silt deposition. This study provides a reference source for large spatial coverage at high resolution remote sensing coastline monitoring and a better understanding of land use in coastal zone.
Highlights
The coastal zone is one of the areas with the most intensive and active human activities
More attention needs to be paid to the role of anthropogenic factors in bringing about coastline changes and their interactions with natural factors
Different natural conditions and various human land uses in the Yangtze River Delta region lead to different coastline types from north to south
Summary
The coastal zone is one of the areas with the most intensive and active human activities. Rapid economic development since the 20th century and a large percentage of world population puts coastal zone areas under intense pressure from both natural and anthropogenic processes [1,2]. Changes in the position of the coastline can be a good indicator of those processes. The interaction between natural processes and human activities causes either coastline progradation or recession [1]. Natural environmental factors influencing coastline position are known, including siltation [1], tides [3], ocean currents [4], and sea level rise [5,6]. Intensive human activities have changed coastal zones significantly by multiple means, including sea enclosure and reclamation [7], harbor construction [8] and fishpond construction [9]. More attention needs to be paid to the role of anthropogenic factors in bringing about coastline changes and their interactions with natural factors
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