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Multiscale analysis of shoreline structure to classify river deltas
Lawrence Vulis,
(he/him),University of California Irvine Irvine California, United States. lvulis@uci.edu
Alejandro Tejedor, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi , United Arab Emirates.
Hongbo Ma, University of California Irvine Irvine California, United States.
Jaap Nienhuis, Utrecht University Utrecht , Netherlands.
Connor Broaddus, University of California Irvine Irvine California, United States.
Jack Brown, University of California Irvine Irvine California, United States.
Doug Edmonds, Indiana University Bloomington Indiana, United States.
Joel C. Rowland, Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos New Mexico, United States.
Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, University of California Irvine Irvine California, United States.
Delta shoreline structure has long been hypothesized to encode information on the relative influence of fluvial, wave, and tidal processes on delta formation and evolution, however analyses and comparisons of deltaic shorelines have typically been qualitative or utilized relatively coarse quantitative metrics. We ask whether robust quantification of shoreline structure would enable mapping of delta shorelines to a physically-based space in which the relative influence of the different processes could be compared, as has recently been done using a sediment budget approach. To explore this question, we analyze Landsat-derived shorelines from more than 50 deltas across the globe. Since the shorelines exhibit variability on scales ranging from tens of meters to kilometers, we propose a multiscale characterization of shoreline structure by mapping the shorelines to univariate series and using spectral analysis techniques to distinguish shoreline variability across a range of spatial scales within and across deltas. We observe distinct classes of deltas, which we attribute to the different processes driving deposition in these systems. The analysis suggests the potential towards a quantitative, process-based classification of delta morphology via shoreline structure.
