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Coastline evolution of the Portuguese south eastern coast: a high-resolution approach in a 65 years’ time-window

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Abstract

The coast, as the interface between land and sea, is a highly dynamic area, endangered by erosion and flooding, particularly at times of sea-level rise. At the present context of climate change, the use of scientific knowledge to understand coastal dynamics and coastal evolution assessment through time is essential to find a suitable management response for a successful adaptive coastal governance. It is proposed that the obtained high-resolution and long-term coastline change dataset is of crucial importance to improve the knowledge on mesoscale evolution of the Portuguese south-eastern coast, from Ancão to Vila Real de Santo António (VRSA), a 55 km long coastal stretch.

The evolutionary trend, from 1950 to 2015, points to a general seaward progradation at the western (Barreta island) and eastern (Cacela peninsula – VRSA) sectors, and mostly an erosional trend at the central barrier island system (Culatra, Tavira and Cabanas islands). Moreover, a considerable average landward displacement of approximately 130 m is observed at Cabanas island.

Regarding overall coastline movement, seaward displacement prevails, with a prograding coastline occupying approximately 54% of the studied sector even though this is mostly associated with human intervention on the coast. The exception is the Manta Rota - Monte Gordo sector where accumulation is likely related to natural processes.

Considering the significant influence man-made interventions have had on the coastline evolution, it is believed that the natural evolutionary pattern would point to an overall erosional trend in the islands sector and a progradational trend from Manta Rota to VRSA beach.

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Notes

  1. ArcGIS® and ArcMap™ are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit www.esri.com.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Direcção Geral do Território (DGT) and CiGEO (Army Geospatial Information Center) for providing orthophotos and the historical aerial photos. João Lopes and Vasco Silva, are greatly acknowledged for their enthusiasm and efficiency in dealing with DSAS software within the acquired and provided services by Synege. Câmara Municipal de Vila Real de Santo António and Câmara Municipal de Castro Marim are acknowledged for providing additional data, that were useful for this study.

We thank the reviewer’s comments that helped improving the quality of the manuscript.

This work was financially supported by GPGE2020 project [POCI-02-0550-FEDER-022222] through Portugal 2020 and European Structural and Investment Funds from the European Union.

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  1. Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia, IP (LNEG) - Unidade de Geologia, Hidrogeologia e Geologia Costeira, Estrada da Portela. Bairro do Zambujal. Apartado 7586, Alfragide, 2610-999, Amadora, Portugal

    Sílvia Nave & Luís Rebêlo

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  1. Sílvia Nave
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  2. Luís Rebêlo
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Correspondence to Sílvia Nave.

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Supplementary Information

ESM 1

Animated Gif – Evolution of Cabanas island and Guadiana coastal sector. Cabanas island and Guadiana coastal sector evolution from 1950 to 2015. Special emphasis to Cabanas island formation after 1958 and its eastward and landward displacement through time. Note: Coastline contours were delineated using the aerial photographs and ortophotos from the flights SPLAL (1950), USAF (1958), CiGEO (1972), FAP (1980), DGT (1985), DGT (1991), DGT (2005), DGT (2010), DGT (2015). The contours were defined using ArcMap, a module from ArcGIS© Desktop 10.6.1 of ArcGIS® software by Esri. The animated Gif was produced using the simple online GIF maker and toolset for basic animated GIF editing from Ezgif.com. (GIF 6.39 MB)

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Nave, S., Rebêlo, L. Coastline evolution of the Portuguese south eastern coast: a high-resolution approach in a 65 years’ time-window. J Coast Conserv 25, 7 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11852-020-00791-3

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