Automating the quantification of coastal change using historical aerial photography: A case study along the coastline of county Cork, Ireland

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dc.contributor.authorChalençon, Emma
dc.contributor.authorCawkwell, Fiona G.L.
dc.contributor.authorO'Shea, Michael
dc.contributor.authorMurphy, Jimmy
dc.contributor.funderCork County Councilen
dc.contributor.funderDepartment of Climate, Energy and the Environmenten
dc.date.accessioned2026-01-07T09:25:55Z
dc.date.available2026-01-07T09:25:55Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.description.abstractCoastlines worldwide are coming under increasing pressure due to climate change and human activity. Data on shoreline change are essential for coastal managers and when no long-term monitoring programs are implemented and shoreline change is typically on the order of less than 1 m/yr., as observed in Ireland, aerial photography is the most valuable source of information. A well-established literature exists for automated vegetation extraction from digital images based on the near infrared reflectance, but there is less research available on spectrally limited colour photography. This study develops a methodology for automating vegetation line extraction from a series of historical aerial photography of the Cork coastline in the South-West of Ireland. The approach relies on the Normalised Green–Blue Difference Index (NGBDI), which is versatile enough to discriminate disparate coastal vegetation environments, at different resolutions and in various lighting and seasonal conditions. An iterative optimal threshold process and the use of LiDAR ancillary datasets resulted in an automated vegetation line measurement with uncertainties estimated to be between 0.6 and 1.2 m. Change rates derived from the vegetation lines extracted present uncertainties in the range of ±0.27 m/yr. This robust and repeatable method provides a valuable alternative to time-consuming and subjective manual digitisation. en
dc.description.sponsorshipCork County Council (Social Sustainability Infrastructure Programme (SSIP)); Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment (Cork Coastline Vulnerability Assessment project (2022–2026))en
dc.description.statusPeer-revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.articleide1
dc.identifier.citationChalençon, E., Cawkwell, F., O'Shea, M. and Murphy, J. (2025) 'Automating the quantification of coastal change using historical aerial photography: A case study along the coastline of county Cork, Ireland', Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures, 3, e1 (12pp). https://doi.org/10.1017/cft.2024.17en
dc.identifier.doi10.1017/cft.2024.17
dc.identifier.endpage12
dc.identifier.issn2754-7205
dc.identifier.journaltitleCambridge Prisms: Coastal Futuresen
dc.identifier.startpage1
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18376
dc.identifier.volume3
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherCambridge University Pressen
dc.rights© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly citeden
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.statusPeer revieweden
dc.subjectAerial photographyen
dc.subjectCoastal monitoringen
dc.subjectColour vegetation indicesen
dc.subjectShoreline changeen
dc.subjectVegetation lineen
dc.subject~Geography - Journal Articles~en
dc.titleAutomating the quantification of coastal change using historical aerial photography: A case study along the coastline of county Cork, Irelanden
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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