SATELLITE-DERIVED SHORELINE DYNAMICS AT THE GERMAN BALTIC SEA

Abstract

Dunes play a central role in the coastal protection strategy of the German part of the Baltic Sea coastline in the state of Mecklenburg Western Pomerania (MWP). Considering the sea level rise and the limited supply of sand a closer inspection of the sand nourishment strategy and its impact on the regional shoreline of MWP is needed. Data availability on the shoreline development is sparse and only recently have the authorities (StALU) in MWP started to increase the temporal and spatial resolution of measurements (StALU 2009). The Google Earth Engine (Gorelick et al. 2017) has facilitated the possibility to investigate shorelines at the planetary scale with freely available satellite images spanning more than 30 years. Luijendijk et al. (2018) and Bishop-Taylor et al. (2021) have demonstrated the need and feasibility of long-term time series that depict the shoreline development over large spatial scales. We present the results from the remote sensing of the shoreline development at the German Baltic Sea utilizing three decades of satellite images.