Study of the Correlation between the Mapped Shoreline - Change and Shoreline

This paper presents the results of studying the correlation between the mapped shoreline-change and shoreline-curvature based on a new concept called shoreline-segment orientation. Shoreline mapping provides a means of monitoring shoreline-change, which is very essential for coastal planning and decision making. When we represent the mapped shorelines in the geographic database, a curved shoreline is represented as a sequence of connected straight line-segments with no real representation of curvature. In this research a new method is developed that determines shoreline-curvature in terms of the angular deviation of each shoreline-segment from its neighbors and also from the whole shoreline introducing two types of orientations, local and global. Shoreline-segment orientation helps determine curvature at any point based on the direction of the incoming waves. In this paper, six representations of the shoreline in a study area in Ohio Lake Erie coast mapped over 28-years have been used to study the relationship between shoreline-change and shoreline-curvature. Average shoreline-changes have shown higher correlation with local shoreline-curvature. The results show that concave shoreline-segments experience more erosion than convex and straight segments.