Shoreline Change and Carbon Emission Analysis for Sustainable Coastal Area Management

Abstract

The coastal area is a space where marine ecosystems and terrestrial ecosystems intersect, and is an important foundation for interaction between living organisms and the environment. Maengbang Beach in South Korea is an area where damage has occurred or is at risk of occurring due to coastal erosion, and has been designated as a coastal erosion management area for preventive management. However, as thermal power plants are built in the area, not only are there concerns about carbon emissions, but the coastline is retreating due to coastal erosion. In addition, various articles and problems have been raised about these issues, but there is a lack of research or practice that quantitatively diagnoses them. Therefore, research is needed to quantitatively analyze and diagnose the impact of various social and ecological systems, carbon emissions, and coastline reduction resulting from the development of the Maengbang Beach area. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the structure of the social-ecological system resulting from the construction and development of a thermal power plant at Maengbang Beach and to quantitatively analyze changes in carbon emissions and reduction of the coastline. To this end, first, we analyze the structure of problems that arise after the development of a thermal power plant at Maengbang Beach from the perspective of the social-ecological system, focusing on carbon emissions and coastline retreat. Second, we quantitatively analyze changes in carbon emissions at Maengbang Beach using techniques such as the Invest Carbon model and i-Tree. Third, we use techniques such as satellite images and Google Street View (GSV) to diagnose changes in the coastline of Maengbang Beach. This study is significant in that it analyzed various problems and issues that appear in Maengbang Beach from the perspective of an integrated social-ecological system, performed a diagnosis of the changes, and presented evidence. In future research, we plan to establish a scenario for the restoration and management of Maengbang Beach based on the results analyzed in this study, perform simulations on carbon emissions and changes in the coastline, and suggest a direction for sustainable management of coastal areas. This research was supported by "Development of living shoreline technology based on blue carbon science toward climate change adaptation" of Korea Institute of Marine Science & Technology Promotion (KIMST) funded by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (KIMST-20220526).