iBluff: An open-source R package for geomorphic analysis of coastal bluffs/cliffs

The R package iBluff is designed for coastal bluffs/bluffs morphological analysis and offers an automatic and reproducible alternative to identify bluff edges using a bare earth digital elevation model (DEM) instead of hand digitizing. This package extracts elevation profiles along automatically identified transects on the bluff-face, bluff top, toe, secondary inflections, relative concavity/convexity of bluff -face, and beach dunes (crests and troughs). The package requires at a minimum a bare earth DEM as a raster and a generalized line shapefile (shoreline) approximately parallel with the bluff-face. Both files should be in the same projected coordinate system. The iBluff package was developed to expand and generalize studies of high-relief coastal areas, investigate erosion and seasonality, and could be extended to use three-dimensional (3D) point-cloud data instead of a DEM.(c) 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

The iBluff package is a software designed for coastal bluffs/bluffs morphological analysis. It provides an automatic and reproducible method using a bare earth digital elevation model (DEM) to identify bluff edges instead of hand digitizing. The package extracts elevation profiles along automatically identified transects on various bluff features and can be extended to use three-dimensional (3D) point-cloud data.