Shoreline changes of a pocket beach: a remote sensing application

Pocket beaches are small beaches within headlands or structures, with practically zero longshore transport. These beaches often have a high environmental and tourist value, so knowledge of the relative dynamics is very important. The paper describes, through a case study relating to the pocket beach of Scilla, a methodology for analyzing the shoreline changes. Scilla is a town located about 20 km north of Reggio Calabria (Italy). The beach overlooks the Tyrrhenian Sea and extends for about 700 m, with an average width of about 50 m. Also, Scilla is subject to frequent coastal floods, which reach the inhabited center with almost annual frequency. The methodology is divided into two phases, one concerning the analysis of the shoreline changes and the other concerning the analysis of the wave climate. Regarding the first phase, the analysis was carried out on QGIS by tracing some transepts and by implementing a function to calculate the distances between the different shorelines. About the second phase, the data from the last 40 years present in the MeteOcean database have been used to evaluate the wave climate. This phase analyzes the main factors influencing the coastal dynamics in order to identify possible correlation between these factors and the shoreline changes. This paper shows a useful methodology to estimate the evolutionary trends of pocket beaches. This methodology takes into account the solid transport, is easily replicable in other similar contexts and is applicable in the field of planning and management of coastal territories.

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