TY - JOUR
T1 - The State of the World's Beaches
AU - Luijendijk, Arjen
AU - Hagenaars, Gerben
AU - Ranasinghe, Roshanka
AU - Baart, Fedor
AU - Donchyts, Gennadii
AU - Aarninkhof, Stefan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is funded by NatureCoast, a project of technology foundation STW (applied science division of NWO) and the Deltares Strategic Research Programme 'Coastal and Offshore Engineering'. Roshanka Ranasinghe is supported by the AXA Research Fund. We would like to thank Peter Ruggiero (Oregon State University), Cheryl Hapke (USGS) and Mitch Harley (UNSW Water Research Laboratory) for sharing the long-term in-situ shoreline measurements allowing for a multi-site validation. The Google Earth Engine team is acknowledged for enabling this global assessment through the GEE platform and their assistance during the analysis
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Coastal zones constitute one of the most heavily populated and developed land zones in the world. Despite the utility and economic benefits that coasts provide, there is no reliable global-scale assessment of historical shoreline change trends. Here, via the use of freely available optical satellite images captured since 1984, in conjunction with sophisticated image interrogation and analysis methods, we present a global-scale assessment of the occurrence of sandy beaches and rates of shoreline change therein. Applying pixel-based supervised classification, we found that 31% of the world's ice-free shoreline are sandy. The application of an automated shoreline detection method to the sandy shorelines thus identified resulted in a global dataset of shoreline change rates for the 33 year period 1984-2016. Analysis of the satellite derived shoreline data indicates that 24% of the world's sandy beaches are eroding at rates exceeding 0.5 m/yr, while 28% are accreting and 48% are stable. The majority of the sandy shorelines in marine protected areas are eroding, raising cause for serious concern.
AB - Coastal zones constitute one of the most heavily populated and developed land zones in the world. Despite the utility and economic benefits that coasts provide, there is no reliable global-scale assessment of historical shoreline change trends. Here, via the use of freely available optical satellite images captured since 1984, in conjunction with sophisticated image interrogation and analysis methods, we present a global-scale assessment of the occurrence of sandy beaches and rates of shoreline change therein. Applying pixel-based supervised classification, we found that 31% of the world's ice-free shoreline are sandy. The application of an automated shoreline detection method to the sandy shorelines thus identified resulted in a global dataset of shoreline change rates for the 33 year period 1984-2016. Analysis of the satellite derived shoreline data indicates that 24% of the world's sandy beaches are eroding at rates exceeding 0.5 m/yr, while 28% are accreting and 48% are stable. The majority of the sandy shorelines in marine protected areas are eroding, raising cause for serious concern.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046277178&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-018-24630-6
DO - 10.1038/s41598-018-24630-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 29703960
AN - SCOPUS:85046277178
VL - 8
JO - Scientific reports
JF - Scientific reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 6641
ER -