Spatial Analysis of Shoreline Erosion, Delaware Bay, New Jersey

Abstract

Abstract Controls of process-response relationships in physical geography vary with scale. Two approaches to this problem are identified. The fixed-scale approach studies process-response relationships within particular scale contexts. The spatial-analytic approach seeks first to determine the spatial structure of the pattern of variability of a process (such as shore erosion) to discover the important scale(s) of variation. Controls operating at this scale have the greatest relative importance at the broadest scale considered. This approach is applied to shoreline erosion along the New Jersey shore of Delaware Bay. Geostatistical and fractal analysis indicates that variability of erosion rates is high, the alongshore pattern complex, and the scale of variability local. This indicates that despite significant long-range differences in erosion rates, short-range, local factors are more important in determining differences in erosion rates than are long-range factors such as the shape of the estuary. A numb...