Arctic coastal zone mapping: Evolution of sedimentary coasts in Greenland

Abstract:

Climate change threatens many of the coastal areas all over the world. In the Arctic, the warming happens at a rate which is three times faster than the global average increasing the pressure on the coast. Arctic coasts differ from coasts in lower latitude in terms of the natural conditions prevailing, i.e. sea-ice, permafrost, and thermal erosion. These factors are likely to change with an increasing temperature, and thereby the erodibility of the shores and the erosivity of the coastal processes are changing.

The majority of studies on arctic coasts focus on tundra coasts. Here, there is a general increase of coastal erosion rates over the last decades. However, the arctic coastal areas of Greenland differ; they are often close to hard rock protrusions and are characterized by large differences in geomorphology, erodibility of sediments, and erosivity by coastal processes. Sedimentary coasts in Greenland are only sporadically investigated, and it is thus difficult to predict the impact of climate changes in these areas.

With this work we focus on sedimentary coasts in Greenland and present shoreline analysis of two sedimentary coastal sites. We show how the position of the shoreline has changed since the 1930’ies and we address the responsible factors controlling this evolution. The hotspots of coastal change are all located near delta mouths and the detected changes are coupled to dominating process occurring here.