Qz. Guo et Np. Psuty, FLOOD-TIDE DELTAIC WETLANDS - DETECTION OF THEIR SEQUENTIAL SPATIAL EVOLUTION, Photogrammetric engineering and remote sensing, 63(3), 1997, pp. 273-280
Techniques to detect evolution of marsh islands in Great Egg Harbor Ba
y, New Jersey are presented in this paper. Aerial photographs and topo
graphic maps were digitized. A geographic information system (Gls) was
subsequently established with the digitized data. A computer program
was also written to carry out necessary computations. Through these ef
forts, change in area, shift of centroid, and rotation of marsh island
s were quantified. It was revealed that (1) over the recent 51-year pe
riod (1940-1992), the areal loss of the entire group of islands has am
ounted to slightly under 5 percent, and most individual islands have t
he same trends of decrease in area; (2) the centroid of the entire gro
up of islands has shifted northeastward, 333 feet to the east and 202
feet to the north, but the trends of individual islands vary; and (3)
the entire group of marsh islands has retained its general orientation
through the period; however, some individual islands have rotated dra
matically These features of marsh island evolution are important to ma
intenance of navigation channels because they affect the width of chan
nels between the islands and the spatial distribution of sedimentation
. These features of marsh island evolution also need to be known for m
anagement of the coastal ecosystem because they are indicators of stab
ility of biological habitats.