Satellite showing the progress of the sea in Portugal. Costa da Caparica, Balial and Troya in the spotlight – Science

in Costa da Caparica, the beach line is receding about 2.5 meters per yearwhile The sand between Lagoa de Óbidos and Praia do Baleal tends to drop by about 2.1 metres per year. Also worry Coastal retreat rates between Troia and Sines, as well as several points on the Algarve coast. These are some of the coastal erosion areas in Portugal that he discovered Shore space.

In addition to the negative highlights, the The European Space Agency (ESA) funds a program to monitor coastal erosion in Europe from spacewhich is now drawing to a close, Also indicates positive cases on some sites.

“Although there is an erosion trend in most of the Portuguese coast, it appears to be In certain places, actions implemented by coastal managers are showing positive resultsPaulo Paganha Baptista, a researcher at the University of Aveiro’s Center for Environmental and Marine Studies who is in charge of the program in Portugal, said in a statement.

Nazareth and the beaches south of the Costa da Caparica are the areas of the Portuguese coast that are the epitome of positivesin the satellite monitoring program report.

For four years, more than 70 coastal science and management organizations from France, Germany, Greece, Romania and Norway in addition to Portugalshared their concerns and expressed the need for regular data and information to characterize coastal dynamics, to assess the evolution of erosion risks and the vulnerability of coastal areas to climate change.

this work It made it possible to cover 4,500 km of coastline in these six countriesfrom the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, through the Atlantic-North Sea coast, to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

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Managed in a consortium by i-Sea, the project has been compiling retrospective data for more than 25 years, describing historical and recent changes affecting European coastlines using satellite data, including Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, from the program European Copernicus.

Satellites Provide information describing beach and coast dynamics In terms of location, evolution of sedimentary structures and associated sand quantity and coastal erosion susceptibility characteristics.

For each of the European countries that participated in this study Several of them have been produced indicators of coastal erosionPaolo Paganha points out, “Including the line of maximum spread, the baseline of the dunes, and the location of the base and peaks of the rocky slopes.”

Coastal retreat trends are evident in many of these countries’ coastal sectors, such as in Portugal, and Climate change, increased intensity and persistence of storm surges, and the general trend of sea level rise seem to predict worrying scenarios for coastal erosion.In case harmonized mitigation policies are not adopted, the researcher warns.

The end of funding for the project this year by the European Space Agency does not mean that coastal erosion indicators will not be generated. Paulo Paganha remembers that Availability is being studiedfor the community of users interested in coastal zone management, For generation services dedicated to the entire national territory, in near real time, for the various coastal erosion indices considered in this projectfor which specific algorithms have been developed for its automatic calculation.