International Journal of Environment and Geoinformatics

1-6

Authors: Bülent Bayram , Inese Janpaule , Özgür Avşar, Mustafa Oğurlu, Salih Bozkurt, Hatice Çatal Reis , Dursun Zafer Seker3

Coastal management requires rapid, up-to-date, and correct information. Thus, the determination of coastal movements and its directions has primary importance for coastal managers. For monitoring the change of shorelines, remote sensing data, very high resolution aerial images and orthophoto maps are utilized for detections of change on shorelines. It is possible to monitor coastal changes by extracting the coastline from orthophoto maps. Along the Baltic Sea and Riga Gulf, Latvian coastline length is 496 km. It is rich of coastal resources and natural biodiversity. Around 120 km of coastline are affected by significant coastal changes caused by climate change, storms, erosion, human activities and other reasons and they must be monitored. In this study, an object-oriented approach has been proposed to detect shoreline and detect the changes by using 1:5000 scaled orthophoto maps of Riga-Latvia (3bands, R, G, and NIR) in the years of 2007 and 2013. As many of the authors have mentioned, object-oriented classification method can be more successful than the pixel-based methods especially for high resolution images to avoid mix-classification. In the presented study the eCognition object-oriented fuzzy image processing software has been used. The results were compared to the results derived from manual digitizing. Extracted and manually digitized shorelines have been divided in 5 m segments in x axis. The y coordinates of the new nodes were taken from the original “.dxf” file or computed by interpolation. Thus, the RMS errors of selected points were calculated.

15-26

Authors: Caesar Bita

One of the characteristics of the East African Coast has been its accessibility. The sea has been a means of contact with the outside world. Over the last 2000 years, there has been an interpenetration of cultures to this region through trade consequently assimilating this coast into the international economic system. Accessibility from the land has made the East African coast historically an integral part of Africa. This allowed movement of goods from inland to the coast and onward to international markets. This coast has a trade advantage because the monsoon winds and oceanic currents are reliable and permit rapid, seasonal navigation, both along the coast of eastern Africa and across the Indian Ocean to western and southern Asia. A number of scholars have discussed how the monsoon winds and currents facilitated communication between various parts of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) seaboard and the Red sea, the Persian Gulf, and southeastern Asia. These winds caused long distance seasonal sailing along the East African coast and beyond to the rest of the ancient world. The islands of Comoros and Madagascar were also part of the Western Indian Ocean seaboard cultural and trade networks from very early times even before the BC/AD changeover. One of the major ancient coastal cities that played a role in this transoceanic trade is Mombasa in the Kenya coast. This paper explores these ancient trade contacts which have been proven by historical period stone anchors discovered in Mombasa, Kenya.

34-39

Authors: Michele Stefanile

In the coastal territories between northern Tuscany and southern Campania, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, constitute a privileged observation post for any study on the port facilities in the Roman time. Along these shores, in fact, there is an amazing concentration of ancient remains connected to port infrastructures, often not very far from the modern cities, and in many cases still recognizable beneath the sea or near it, despite the big changes suffered by the Italian coastal landscape over the past two millennia

49-56

Authors: Salvatore Agizza

The coast from Punta Tresino to Ogliastro at the National Park of Cilento and Vallo di Diano is rich in caves while the bottom is cloaked in seagrass meadows on which shipwrecks dating from the Roman era and World War II were found. Natural landscapes, above and below water, interspersed with eloquent archaeological landmarks: coastal quarries, a roman harbour, remains of maritime villa with aquaria for fish farming. For this multileveled territory, a project proposal for the construction of underwater archaeological nature routes which aims to promote new ways of using archaeological heritage would be desirable.