VISUALIZING INTERANNUAL TO DECADAL COASTAL VARIABILITY UTILIZING VIDEOS PRODUCED FROM REMOTELY SENSED DATA

Coastlines represent an interesting and widely studied convolution of intense anthropogenic development superimposed onto morphologies that are among the most dynamic on the planet. Coastal populations continue to increase at a much greater rate than inland communities and are expected to reach 1 billion people between 2030 and 2060. Continuing global sea level rise and increasing storminess will likely exacerbate coastal hazards, including flooding, episodic coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion, and coastal morphological changes. Although rapid change is readily observed during large storms or hurricanes, long term annual to decadal coastal change is much harder to visualize and conceptualize. The authors use videos developed from remotely sensed data to enhance conceptualization of coastal processes for planning and management stakeholders. The use of video presentations is particularly helpful because they can cover a wide variety of temporal and spatial scales.

Near decadal coastal imagery has been available through high altitude photogrammetry efforts since the 1930’s. Near annual coastal imagery became available with the onset of the Landsat program in the 1970’s. A significant amount of additional imagery was acquired through other federal, state, and local government agencies such as the USGS, NOAA, State Departments of Transportation, and local Assessors Offices providing annual and inter annual images at spatial resolutions of 10cm – 1m. With the advent of GIS systems these images could be rectified and then layered to better understand change through time using a multitude of visual base shoreline proxies. Now with the increased awareness and use of video editing software the rectified images can be used to create videos. These videos can then be used to conceptualize a multitude of coastal processes including: performance of costal restoration efforts, rapid change in sedimentation rates due to storms or other geomorphic processes, loss of protective barrier islands as sea level rises and lower sedimentation rates occur. The videos are also useful as a tool for verification and comparison to coastal models and provide an easy to understand educational resource for stakeholder engagement.