Quantitative Analysis on Coastline Changes of Yangtze River Delta Based on High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing Images

Abstract

The coastline situation reflects socioeconomic development and ecological environment in coastal zones. Analyzing coastline changes clarifies the current coastline situation and provides a scientific basis for making environmental protection policies, especially for coastlines with significant human interference. As human activities become more intense, coastline types and their dynamic changes become more complicated, which needs more detailed identification of coastlines. High spatial resolution images can help provide detailed large spatial coverage at high resolution information on coastal zones. This study aims to map the position and status of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) coastline using an NDWI threshold method based on 2 m Gaofen-1/Ziyuan-3 imagery and analyze coastline change and coastline type distribution characteristics. The results showed that natural and artificial coastlines in the YRD region accounted for 42.73% and 57.27% in 2013 and 41.56% and 58.44% in 2018, respectively. The coastline generally advanced towards the sea, causing a land area increase of 475.62 km2. The changes in the YRD coastline mainly resulted from a combination of large-scale artificial construction and natural factors such as silt deposition. This study provides a reference source for large spatial coverage at high resolution remote sensing coastline monitoring and a better understanding of land use in coastal zone.