The spatiotemporal assessments for tidal flat erosion associated with urban expansion in the conterminous coastal United States from 1985 to 2015

Chao Xu; Weibo Liu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165660

The spatiotemporal assessments for tidal flat erosion associated with urban expansion in the conterminous coastal United States from 1985 to 2015

Sci Total Environ. 2023 Nov 15:899:165660. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165660. Epub 2023 Jul 20.

Authors

Chao Xu¹, Weibo Liu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA; Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA.
² Department of Geosciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA. Electronic address: liuw@fau.edu.

PMID: 37478924
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165660

Abstract

Tidal flats are of great importance to coastal residents and environments, which are recently facing unprecedented challenges due to massive urban expansions. While some case studies have been conducted in small areas, it is yet to come a picture to examine the issue at the nationwide level. To fill this void, it is necessary to reconsider whether the analytical and statistical methods used in the previous studies are still appropriate to the larger scales, which accordingly needs to be refined and updated. Aiming at this issue, this study implemented a justification for the conterminous United States, in which nearly 70 % of the counties by the seashore with intensified tidal flats in 1985 were selected to conduct a comprehensive assessment. Based on the 156 selected counties, this paper firstly analyzed the spatiotemporal change patterns of tidal flats and urban extents from 1985 to 2015, and then combined these results and implemented a series of correlation assessments between tidal flat loss and urban expansion. As a result, we found that urban expansions in the conterminous coastal United States have not only substantially squeezed the space of tidal flats, but also significantly affected the surrounding tidal flat environments during the three decades.

Keywords: Land cover transition; Spatiotemporal correlation; Tidal flats; Urban expansion.