Linking shoreline displacement to environmental conditions in the Wax Lake Delta, USA
Abstract
The dynamics of river deltas are not well-understood in part because of scarcity of historical data that document the growth or retreat of their channel networks, islands and shorelines. In particular, the mapping of deltaic shorelines is not trivial, however recent developments allow for their extraction from satellite and aerial imagery. Here, we present an analysis of environmental data and Landsat imagery of the Wax Lake Delta, a naturally-developing river delta in the shallow Atchafalaya Basin, Gulf of Mexico, USA. The image-based shoreline corresponds to the hydrodynamic shoreline, that is, the boundary of the subaerial and subaqueous portions of the delta, however, can be related to a morphodynamically-relevant shoreline by application of our method [Geleynse et al., 2012] to bathymetric-topographic data. Moreover, the effect of tides, river floods, wind, and vegetation cover on the extracted shorelines of the Wax Lake Delta can be identified.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMEP31A0818G
- Keywords:
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- 1825 HYDROLOGY Geomorphology: fluvial