Human Induced Shoreline Change

Keil Schmid worked with BMI Environmental to define shoreline change in complex shorelines in several port locations in Mississippi. The work was performed to assess the effects of human modifications (port development) on the nearby natural shorelines including wetlands. Shoreline changes in these settings are complex and spatially inconsistent, unlike sandy open-coast shorelines. In order to both densely measure the change and smooth high frequency variation a node to node analysis was performed using shorelines from 1966 to 2012. The data were captured at 10 m intervals (similar to a 10 m transect spacing) and contained in an offshore baseline. The baseline attributes included the raw measurements as well as several different metrics to define the shoreline change.

Node to node technique for measuring spatially complex shoreline change