Urbanski, J. A., Wochna A., Herman A., 2011. Automated granulometric analysis and grain-shape estimation of beach sediments using object-based image analysis. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 64 (Proceedings of the 11th International Coastal Symposium), – . Szczecin, Poland, ISSN 0749-0208 This work presents an automated, image-analysis based method for determining the grain characteristics of s...

Pre-operational survey at Kalpakkam coast, indicated elevated gamma background radiation levels in the range of 100-4000 nGy h(-1) over the large tracts of the coastal sands due to the presence of pockets of monazite mineral in beach sands. In view of the prevalence of monazite, a systematic gamma spectrometric study of distribution of natural radionuclides in soil and beach sand samples collec...

The introduction of pollutants into the marine environment is inevitable, so an understanding of their effects is needed. Because shallow, coastal waters are at greatest risk and many of these shorelines are sandy, a test system for the shallow, sandy, subtidal environment is required. We developed a microcosm system for this purpose and tested it for three months to determine whether the benth...

Encroachment of tall grasses and shrubs in coastal dunes has resulted in loss of vegetation heterogeneity. This is expected to have negative effects on animal diversity. To counteract encroachment and develop structural heterogeneity grazing is a widely used management practice. Here, we aim to functionally interpret changes in vegetation composition and configuration following grazing manageme...

LADS (Laser Airborne Depth Sounding) is a new laser bathymetric survey tool that has applicability in clear coastal (Case II) waters down to -70 m depth. The new sounding technique features rapid acquisition of large high-quality data sets via variable swath widths that are independent of water depth. This advanced airborne laser bathymetric (ALB) system was deployed along the southeast Florida...

Several hurricanes struck Florida, U.S. in 2004 and 2005 causing widespread damage to urban and rural areas. We measured the impacts of five of these hurricanes on the urban forest and combined these results with four other hurricanes to present an assessment of wind resistance for southeastern United States coastal plain tree species. Urban forest loss was positively correlated with wind speed...

This paper presents a new model, MUSCLE (Multidirectional Scanning for Line Extraction), for automatic vectorization of raster images with straight lines. The algorithm of the model implements the line thinning and the simple neighborhood methods to perform vectorization. The model allows users to define specified criteria which are crucial for acquiring the vectorization process. In this model...

[1] Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) into the ocean is increasingly recognized as an important component of land-ocean interaction. Numerous geological settings may be the source of terrestrially derived SGD, including spatially extensive sand dune systems, which are a common coastal setting in tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions throughout the world. Within the catchment of the G...