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Abstract
Coastal landscapes provide significant natural resources and environmental sustainability. Due to the effects of sea level rise, increased storm frequency, climatic
changes, rapid population growth, and anthropogenic activity, coastal landscapes have
become increasingly vulnerable. To better understand the extent of changes occurring
along the coast, this research is performed 3-fold in the southeastern United States (US)
and in the Souss Massa Basin of Morocco. (1) The Southeast Coastal Network (SECN) of
the National Park Service (NPS) has exhibited evidence of fluctuations in sea level which
causes coastal erosion. Airborne LiDAR acquired from NOAA was analyzed to identify
changes in both elevation and the spatial volume of unconsolidated sedimentary material
in the coastal southeast from 2006 to 2018. Results indicate a quasi-cyclic process where
unconsolidated sediment distribution and the morphodynamic equilibrium changes with
time. (2) In the SECN of the NPS, salt marshes are representative of some of the most
impacted vegetation type in these sites. Sentinel-2 data acquired from the USGS
EarthExplorer database was used to identify the temporal and spatial changes in salt marsh
presence from 2016 to 2020. ENVI-derived unsupervised and supervised classification
algorithms were applied to determine the most appropriate procedure to measure distant
areas of salt marsh increases and decreases. The results from this approach indicate that the
ENVI-derived maximum likelihood classification provides a statistical distribution and
calculation of the probability (>90%) that the given pixels represented both water and salt
marsh environments. (3) The Souss Massa Basin in Morocco has experienced extensive
groundwater abstraction causing accelerated subsidence rates. The Souss-Massa Basin was
analyzed using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) techniques to identify
land deformation and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) was used to
approximate the amount of water stored in this region. Results suggest there is a correlation
between groundwater storage changes and land deformation in the Souss Massa basin.
Total water storage and groundwater storage decreased to (-10cm) between 2016-2021,
while the InSAR analysis displayed land deformation of (-2cm) from 2016-2021. This
analysis displays how the over-exploitation of groundwater resources influence landscape
changes that impact groundwater dynamics.