The application of geographic information technology to coastal geomorphology

With the development of modern oceanic observation technologies,coastal survey data have been experiencing a substantial growth.The integration management of the data from different disciplines,different sources and different formats has become a major research field in coastal geomorphology by using Geographic Information System (GIS).This paper puts forward a new methodology framework of GIS techniques in coastal ocean geomorphology,including data acquisition,process,analysis,and representation.It focuses on some major GIS techniques to study the land-ocean interaction mechanism,such as spatial analysis,submarine topography model and three-dimension (3D) visualization,and apply its result to coastal urban planning,harbor site selection and geomorphology environment about coral reef and islands on the continental shelf.The case studies cover the whole coastal ocean to serve the social community,economical development and diplomatic rights for decision-making all round in the coastal zone.The research shows clearly that the application of coastal multi-source geospatial platform has changed the traditional coastal geomorphology science dramatically from its research scope,fields and methods,however,as made clear in this paper,extracting accurate information from remote sensing data and GIS databases for coastal geomorphological applications is a nontrivial challenge that requires the combined knowledge and skills of information scientists and geomorphologists.