Assessing flood risk and detecting changes of salt water inflow in a coastal micro-tidal brackish marsh using GIS

Abstract

In order to assess changes in salt water inflow and potential flood risks due to sea level rise in a micro-tidal Beka brackish marsh on the Polish Baltic Coast GIS was used. Such wetlands are important elements of coastal zone natural environments. Creating a geodatabase within a GIS system makes it possible to carry out broad analyses of complex systems, such as coastal wetlands. The results indicate that a 40 cm sea-level rise would considerably increase the frequency of flooding in the investigated area, in part because of the small range of the annual sea level oscillations there. A map of the index of changes in saltwater inflow, created with the help of cost-weighted distance (functions), shows that changes which have occurred along the shore, consisting of filling in the drainage channel outlets, have likely had a significant impact on the vegetation of the area. Copyrigh© by Institute of Oceanography, University of Gdańsk, Poland.