Coastal Line Changes in Mediterranean Cities: Man or Nature?

Abstract

Despite being a relatively stable sea compared to the great oceans, the Mediterranean is not a risk-free place of changes in the coast, both anthropogenic and natural. The coast is home to a large part of the population and cities which are generally in constant growth due to the quality of life and the possibilities offered (i.e. tourism and other activities linked to the sea). In Mediterranean coastal cities, the first maritime line is usually the one with the highest economical value and, where the space is used intensively. For this reason, land managers have developed strategies to occupy the maximum extension of the coast. Some of these are new uses for old port areas, take advantage of coastal containment works, extending the beaches mean artificial regenerations, the construction of breakwaters and, adding waste materials in order to increment the land, gain it to the sea. So that, the urban coastal lines of Mediterranean cities have been changing a long time. This work presents these changes in the past years (last 60 years) through a methodology based on the comparison of aerial photography from different times (1956-1957 and PNOA 2014-2016) in the following settlements of the SouthEast of Spain:

Mapping of Coastline Changes in Athens Riviera over the Past 76 Year’s Measurements

“…Chee et al [42] found 21 km of artificial coast in a coastline 106 km-long in Penang Island, in Malaysia. In the Mediterranean Sea, Llorens et al [43] registered changes in southeastern coastline of Spain due to human land reclaimed to the sea from different times (1956-1957 and 2014-2016). Anthony [44], reports that the Mediterranean coastline has been drastically modified by human interventions over the last two centuries.…”

“…These modifications have been notably associated with the construction of marinas, leisure harbours and artificial beaches, and have resulted in the emergence of artificial shorelines. Regarding the applied methodology, aerial photos and remote sensing data are often used to map and estimate the coastline changes worldwide [33,37,43,45]. Aerial photos supply high-resolution images, but they are an expensive and time-consuming process when covering a large area.…”

“…Regarding the applied methodology, aerial photos and remote sensing data are often used to map and estimate the coastline changes worldwide [33,37,43,45]. Aerial photos supply high-resolution images, but they are an expensive and time-consuming process when covering a large area.…”

Remote Sensing of the Coastline Variation of the Guangdong–Hongkong–Macao Greater Bay Area in the Past Four Decades

“…In Mediterranean Climate, the coastline has been drastically modified by human interventions over the last two centuries [71]. In southeastern Spain, the coastline has changed due to human land reclamation to the sea in different periods (1956-1957 and 2014-2016) [72]. In the Athens Riviera, the coastline was enhanced by 40% from 1945 to 2021, while land reclaimed to the sea area now approached 2.7 km 2 because of human interventions.…”

Identification and analysis of long-term changes in river deltas and riparian zones using time-series multispectral data

“…Chatziparaskeva et al (2022) efficiently analyzed the concentrations of microplastics on marine and coastal waters in the Mediterranean region, whereas many other studies (Tsai et al 2022;Wu et al 2022) have monitored the coastline changes of estuary environments by using multispectral time-series datasets. More specifically, coastline monitoring assessment studies have been carried out through different approaches (remote sensing, photogrammetry, GIS) across the wider Mediterranean region (Travers et al 2010;Nicholls and Hoozemans 1996) as well as in specific countries and areas, e.g., within Spain (Llorens et al 2018), Greece (Skilodimou et al 2021), Italy (Fabris 2019) and Cyprus (Andreou et al 2017).…”