Monitoring Shoreline Changes along the Southwestern Coast of South Africa from 1937 to 2020 Using Varied Remote Sensing Data and Approaches

Abstract

Shoreline analysis in response to the rapid erosion of sandy beaches has evolved along with geospatial and computer technology; it remains an essential task for sustainable coastal management. This severe and rapid erosion has been reported at several sandy beaches worldwide, including Yzerfontein beaches, on the southwest coast of South Africa. We determined this vulnerability from 1937 to 2020 and predicted its change by 2040 by manually delineating shoreline positions from 1937, 1960, and 1977 from aerial photographs and Landsat products between 1985 and 2020 in an automated fashion using the CoastSat toolkit and Google Earth Engine. We then integrated these datasets to calculate the extent of shoreline dynamics over the past eight decades using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS). Our results show that the coastline changed dynamically between 1937 and 2020, culminating in an average net erosion of 38 m, with the most extensive erosion occurring between 2015 and 2020. However, coastal projections indicate a slight change in shoreline position over the next two decades. Further studies should integrate additional high resolution remote sensing data and non-remote sensing data (e.g., field surveys) to improve our results and provide a more thorough understanding of the coastal environment and overcome some of remotely-sensed data underlying uncertainties.