Monitoring Changes of Coastal Zone in Lingding Bay by Integrating Remote Sensing (RS) and GIS

The surrounding area of the Lingding Bay has one of the highest economic development rates of China. Rapid industrialization and urbanization has resulted in extensive changes in land use, including the construction of harbors and embankments. For the analysis of the changes of the coastal zone multi-temporal Landsat images have been digitized by using the integrated RS and GIS technique, in combination with topographical and nautical data. From the change analysis, it can be concluded that the largest variations in the position of the coastline over time occurred in the Nansha Harbor Zone and Qianhai Bay, mainly caused by extensive harbor construction. Based on the research of the coastal change in recent decades, it is suggested that the human activities have become one of the major factors affecting the morphological processes of the Lingding Bay.