Spatio-temporal shoreline changes along the southern Black Sea coastal zone

The Black Sea is experiencing human-induced ecological degradation along its coastal zone. As part of the Coastal Zone Management strategy, regular monitoring of shoreline changes plays an important role. Growing population in coastal zones creates extra pressure on shores which leads to the creation of new land filling areas (accretion). Moreover, a recently completed highway construction caused a catastrophic impact on coastal areas of the southern part of the Black Sea and needs to be taken into account. The main purpose of this article is to determine the pattern of shoreline changes along the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. Remote sensing is used to identify and evaluate hot spots of shoreline changes. A developed algorithm automatically extracts the coast line position by processing satellite images covering the period of 1987 to 2001. The maximum and minimum shoreline changes in terms of erosion and accretion were 118 to 53 and 95 to 635 m, respectively. More significant changes have been determined in the eastern part than the western part of the Black Sea. The locations with higher changes were mainly accretion regions along the study area. It can be concluded that coastal movements mainly caused by humans induced impacts at the coasts of the Black Sea. Coastal accretion is significant at the most part of the Turkish Black Sea coast and might be related to a recently constructed international highway. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3624520]