Introduction

Abstract

The importance of sea-level and coastline changes increases for the population living along the edge of the world’s oceans and seas. This holds in particular where eustatic sea-level rise is superimposed on isostatic subsidence and storm induced coastal erosion. This is the case on the southern and eastern Baltic Sea coast. In the South, glacio-isostatic subsidence enhances the effect of climate induced sea-level rise and strong storm effects cause a continuous retreat of the coast. On the eastern coast the glacio-isostatic uplift compensates eustatic sea-level rise, but storm induced waves cause permanent morphodynamic changes of the coastline. Concepts for protection, defense but also for the economic use of the coastal zone adjusted to their different environments are required increasingly. The elaboration of these management concepts can be facilitated through models generating future projection of coastal developments in front of the modern climate change. The anthology comprises results of a research project “Coastline Changes of the southern Baltic Sea – Past and future projection (CoPaF)” which was run by a team of Estonian, German, and Polish geoscientists and coastal engineers from 2010 to 2013. In the first part, the chapters are devoted to the explanation of conceptual and dynamical models to describe morphodynamic changes along the Baltic Sea southern coasts consisting of Pleistocene and Holocene sediments. In the second part, regional studies are published ranging from the Mecklenburgian Bay to the Gulf of Finland. Here, not only local and regional effects of coastal dynamics are considered, but also methodological aspects, such as the use of historical maps for the parameterization of morphodynamic models. As the southern and eastern Baltic serves as a natural laboratory for the investigation of coastal processes – the achievements of the project will contribute not only to the solution of regional problems in Baltic coastal research and engineering, but, will also contribute to general problems in the description, modelling and parameterization of coastal processes and morphodynamics.