Evaluating the shoreline vulnerability of eastern coast of Makran employing geomorphological and hydrodynamic parameters

Coastal zones are highly dynamic and constantly influenced by geomorphological and physical properties. Thus, estimating coastal vulnerability around the world is necessary for coastal zone management. Makran region, in the southeast of Iran, with a 133 km coastline, is considered a case study for vulnerability analysis and estimating its potential for further economic developments. The coastal vulnerability index (CVI) was considered with five parameters: geomorphology, regional elevation, coastal slope, shoreline changes and mean significant wave height. Significant wave height is an additional variable we added to CVI estimation compared to previous works. MIKE 21 software was used to extract this variable. Seven images from the Landsat satellite were employed to provide shoreline transformation. According to our results 52% of the coastline is ranked as high-vulnerability index, and 15% as very-high vulnerability index. We detected some anthropogenic areas with considerable accretion along the shoreline, while these areas were not considered vulnerable areas according to CVI. Thus, we reckon a sort of shortcoming in calculating CVI for not giving weight to the variables involved. This aim to be achieved necessitates organized historical research over the area, which was out of the scope of this sole research.

Inclusive employment of geomorphic and hydrodynamic parameters is suggested for calculating CVI. However, a shortcoming in this calculation is the lack of information to give weight to the variables involved.