HR: 0800h
AN: H41B-0514    [Abstracts]
TI: Daily and Decadal Coastal Changes Along the Yellow River Delta
AU: * Evans, C A
EM: cindy.evans-1@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Johnson Space Center,Image Science & Analysis Lab, Mail Code KX 2101 NASA Pkwy, Houston, TX 77058, United States
AU: Wilkinson, J
EM: justin.wilkinson-1@nasa.gov
AF: Jacobs Engineering and Image Science & Analysis Lab, NASA Johnson Space Center, PO Box 58447, Houston, TX 77258, United States
AU: Stefanov, W L
EM: william.l.stefanov@nasa.gov
AF: Jacobs Engineering and Image Science & Analysis Lab, NASA Johnson Space Center, PO Box 58447, Houston, TX 77258, United States
AB: We use the dynamic Yellow River Delta in China as one of the world's best examples to demonstrate rapid changes along coastal regions. Several factors contribute to the changes: 1) the river carries a heavy sediment load, leading to coastal deposition and frequent river course changes; 2) the lower reaches of the river support a high population density, leading to extensive development of the delta region and water over-subscription. On very short time scales, the delta area also changes dramatically because the low-lying coastal region is easily flooded or exposed by tides in conjunction with wind-driven sea level fluctuations. While several researchers have correlated the amount of delta growth with annual river discharge, we use satellite imagery from various sources to provide a regional assessment of change that occurs on very small time scales (days to weeks). Observations are correlated to local climate data, when available. With these data sets, we provide a new summary of the long- term rates of change of the Yellow River delta, giving consideration to the substantial short-term coastline differences. While the 20-year interval over a defined region shows the delta area changing by up to 400 sq km (and an overall growth of more than 200 sq km), differences in delta area (over the same region) from day to day or within a few weeks can be as high as 100 sq km. Coastal changes of this magnitude and at such high frequency present challenges for defining the "normal" coastline configuration and highlight the effect of the temporal scale in characterizing changes along deltas.
DE: 1640 Remote sensing (1855)
DE: 1641 Sea level change (1222, 1225, 4556)
DE: 1825 Geomorphology: fluvial (1625)
DE: 1862 Sediment transport (4558)
DE: 4217 Coastal processes
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting