Redefining the Limits of the Coastal Zone: Bridging the Gap Between Land and Sea Using Remote Sensing, GIS, and the Internet

In most countries throughout the World, coastal zone management has traditionally been practiced in a sectoral fashion, based upon political or socioeconomic boundaries. In the United Kingdom, for example, the coastal zone is largely managed by local authorities, whose planning and management jurisdiction often extends much further inland than could realistically be called ‘the coastal zone’. More recently, the concept of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) has led to the idea that coastal zones would be more effectively and efficiently managed on the basis of seemingly natural process boundaries (such as sediment cells or estuaries) which do not operate within the current and static bounds of anthropogenic divisions. Furthermore, many voluntary management groups now exist who coordinate coastal planning and management at a more wide-ranging and holistic level than in the past. There are also several other interrelated problems associated with managing the coast. A number of different definitions of the coastal zone exist ranging from a narrow strip at the coast, to an area from the low water mark to a river watershed found much further inland. The result is many different boundaries and areal units. Also the data and information required by coastal zone managers to do their job is often dispersed among many different agencies, collected in different ways, stored in different formats and is consequently inconsistent, difficult to use, and may even be inaccessible. For ICZM, this problem is further exacerbated by the fact that both marine and land data are collected and stored in different ways, and cannot easily be matched together when interactions between the land and sea need to be studied, or analyses undertaken. This is a problem when ICZM is inherently about land and sea interactions, and cross-border interactions e.g. the Solway Firth. Remote sensing, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and the Internet can, however, offer potential solutions to many of these problems. Remote sensing has, for a long time, been an invaluable source of environmental data and information. It has many advantages, including the capability to collect data over large tracts of land at any one time, and at a range of scales, from low-resolution data covering large areas, to high-resolution data covering smaller areas. In essence, it offers a hierarchical data source that can frequently be matched to process hierarchies found within the human and natural environment. Furthermore, remotely sensed data can be collected in a standard format that, if geo-corrected to a map or projection system, offers a relatively consistent and robust database of environmental data. Moreover, remote sensing provides a unique ability to collect both terrestrial and marine data in one seamless dataset. For example, one satellite image will capture a whole estuary and its surroundings, including both the marine and land components, in one data GeoCoast Vol. (2) No. (1) pp. (1-15) (April) (2001)  (2000) theUKcoastalzone.com 2 format.GIS provides a suite of geospatial data handling tools allowing for the integration and analysis of multiple disparate datasets from many different sources. This provides the user with the necessary spatial data handling functionality to undertake tasks such as merging, overlay, and recode.The Internet is a rapidly developing and expanding technology that is increasingly allowing people to gain access to the data and information they require from a whole range of sources on a global scale. With the expansion of Geographic Information Systems onto the Internet, access to geographic data, and the manipulation of it, will become even easier for the environmental manager who may not necessarily be a computer applications specialist. Combining Internet and multimedia technology, it is possible to create a simplified interface to geographic information within an Internet browser. By constructing a topological map, similar to that of the London Underground, relationships between the terrestrial and marine environment and management areas can be displayed in a less complicated fashion. Using lines and nodes as hyperlinks this type of navigational interface would offer coastal managers access to a hierarchically-based database of remotely sensed imagery with links to other geographic data and information covering both the marine and terrestrial environment, therefore bridging the gap between the land and the sea.