Coastal dynamism in Southern Thailand: An application of the CoastSat toolkit

Jerome Curoy, Raymond Ward, John Barlow, Cherith Moses, Kanchana Nakhapakorn

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In Thailand, 17% of the population lives by the coast, approximately 11 million people. A combination of coastal erosion, sea level rise and coastal land subsidence are critical issues threatening the livelihoods of coastal communities. Thailand has invested a lot of money and installed conservation policies to restore and protect coastal mangroves and realign or replenish their beaches. This study assessed the use of the toolkit Coastsat to digitise a time series of shoreline positions from open access satellite images between 1990 and 2019 along 560 km of coastline in the provinces of Krabi and Nakhon Si Thammarat (NST). Based on these digitised shorelines and the use of the software Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS), it was possible to identify shoreline change, which varied between -66 to +16.4 m/y in the mangroves of NST and -22.2 to +10.6 m/year on its sandy beaches. Shoreline change rates along the Krabi coast varied -34.5 to +21.7 m/year in the mangroves and -4.1 to +4 m/year on sandy beaches. Analysis of the spatial and temporal variations of the shoreline position during the survey period reveals a linkage between extreme weather conditions and coastal erosion along the NST coast while that linkage is less clear along the Krabi coast. CoastSat delivers crucial and accurate time series shoreline data over extensive areas that are vital to coastal managers and researchers in a completely remote manner, which is key with the presence of COVID-19 travel bans.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0272977
Pages (from-to)e0272977
Number of pages22
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume17
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

PIs and receivers of the awards: Professor Cherith Moses and Associate Professor Dr Kanchana Nakhapakorn. The Thai-coast project is funded through the Newton Fund Understanding of the Impacts of Hydrometeorological Hazards in South East Asia programme, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the UK and the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) in Thailand. Project reference: NE/S003231/1 URLs: https://nerc.ukri.org/ https://www.newton-gcrf.org/newton-fund/ https://esrc.ukri.org/ https://www.trf.or.th/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Keywords

  • COVID-19 - epidemiology
  • Environmental Monitoring - methods
  • Humans
  • Thailand

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Coastal dynamism in Southern Thailand: An application of the CoastSat toolkit'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this