Spatio-Temporal Changes In The Santo Domingo Bay And Boca Rapel River Shoreline From Satellite Images

Remote sensing in the optical region of the electromagnetic spectrum has demonstrated its ability to provide synoptic information on spatia-Temporal changes in the position of the coastline. It allows us to move from areas with little data collected, mainly in summer seasons, to robust data that allows the reconstruction of the decadal evolution of the shoreline position and to the analysis of the spatiotemporal changes introduced by the impact of disturbing events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, ENSO and coastal storms. This study, 680 satellite images were used to quantify the changes in two areas affected by earthquakes followed by tsunamis, and monthly averages of net beach width were used to reconstruct. In this work, two massive shoreline extraction algorithms, SHOREX and CoastSAT, were used to determine the monthly mean variability of the net beach width and to understand the changes occurring at the Rapel River mouth bar. The results show that the Bay is currently undergoing high erosional processes in 60%, with losses of net beach width of up to 75 m in some sectors. Since 2015, these processes have been accentuated due to increased coastal storms. While at the mouth of the Rapel River, the bar went from an area of 13.3 ha in 1985 to 1.73 ha after the earthquake of 2010. In the mouth areas, the dynamics of the bar are affected by the relative contribution of fluvial sediments, which produces a break in the orientation of the shoreline along the mouth in this case, he notes that littoral drift plays an important role in the feedback between fluvial sediment supply and wave-deposited sediments.