Monitoring of Coastal Line and Coastal Landform Changes in Persian Gulf with Remote Sensing and Geographic information System Techniques (Case Study: Asaluyeh Coastal Region)

Recent developments in civil activities in coastal areas of Iran have destroyed important parts of geomorphologic landforms on beaches and have created considerable changes on coastal lines. Northern coast of Persian Gulf has many oil and gas reservoirs and release to free oceans. There fore, it has more intense geomorphologic changes than other areas. In this coastal part, Asaluyeh area plays an important role because of development of oil and gas installations. In this research, we have compared 1990 TM satellite images with 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006 IRS images visually, and field observations from sedimentation and erosion in Persian Gulf coastal line. In Addition, we use High and Low Position technique and Change Detection in Erdass and ArcGIS Software for detection of changes in coastal line and landforms. On the basis of these results, the rate of sedimentation is about 50%. Sedimentation is often as sedimentary noses behind coastal buildings with progressive part in water for example jetties and wave breaks. With detail investigations, we can see that 85% of geomorphologic landforms in Asaluyeh area have changed in last ten years, because of creation of industrial installations on coastal lines. There are only some intact parts of estuaries and marshes in eastern part because of trees and environmental protected areas (neighbor with Nayband National Park). Some sedimentary landforms such as deltas and floodplains have destroyed and depositional tails and marshes have created in Asaluyeh coastal line. In this research remote sensing has been an important tool for database produced, and GIS had important role for spatial analysis.