Shallow Coastal Landforms

Abstract

Shallow coastal landforms are often highly dynamic environments due to natural and anthropogenic pressure. The action of waves, tidal currents, rivers inputs, sea-level rise, climate, geology and coastal engineering shapes their morphology at different temporal and spatial scales. The recent technological development of the multibeam echosounder, LiDAR and satellite systems now permits the mapping of shallow coastal landforms at very high resolution, even for depths shallower than 10 m, providing improved understanding of these morphological features. In this chapter, we provide a review of the main shallow coastal submarine landforms and of the newest methods to map them and measure their changes over time.