QUANTIFYING THE DYNAMICS OF A LIVING SHORELINE USING SATELLITE IMAGERY AND UAV-BASED OBSERVATIONS

A grand challenge exists to translate our current knowledge of climate change and its amplified signals into reliable information relevant to the sustainability of Virginia’s coastal and inland communities. This research is an integration of geographic data demarcating shoreline position and its analysis to enumerate change along an ~330-meter frontal shoreline segment beside Hull Springs, located in Westmoreland County, Virginia. A time series of shoreline data obtained from aerial, satellite and UAV imagery covering the period 1937 to 2021 was obtained and the Analyzing Moving Boundaries Using R (AMBUR) technique was used to quantify rates of shoreline movement.

Results show that the alongshore coastline retreated at an average rate of -0.06 meters per year over the period 1937-2021. Further, the analysis revealed a dominant erosional signal along the southwestern portion of the study area where there is an absence of shoreline stabilization with approximately 56.25% of the shoreline retreating landward over the most recent interval (2008-2021)