Land cover changes on a barrier island: Yearly changes, storm effects, and recovery periods

Abstract

Ecosystems on barrier islands provide socio-ecological services to terrestrial and aquatic endangered species, as well as human inhabitants. The management of these coastal ecosystems is challenged by changes in annual and storm time scales driven by atmospheric, oceanographic, geologic, and human processes. Thus, the need for data and methods to accurately quantify and assess ecosystem and land cover evolution to inform stakeholders is on the rise. A dataset of high-resolution color infrared images of a U.S. National Wildlife Refuge is used to quantify annual land cover changes at a barrier island scale and to identify the effects of hurricanes and their recovery periods. Geospatial analysis and change matrices depict the interconnection between 13 land cover classes. Vegetation growth over regions of bare sand formed by storms leads to the creation of successional habitats, while the loss of bare sand dune to beach, and beach to water are indicators of erosional processes. Storms passing along the ocean and sound side of a barrier island result in different land cover changes that can last anywhere from 4 to more than 7 years, respectively. Management practices for coastal regions and the presence of infrastructure partially control the expansion of marshes, bare sand, maritime brush, and dunes.