Shoreline changes at Sant'Agata River mouth (Reggio Calabria, Italy)

The analysis of shoreline changes is very important for coastal planning and management. In territories such as Calabria (Italy), characterized by significant anthropogenic pressures and various eroded coasts, the knowledge of the shoreline changes, and the factors that influence them, is necessary for management and planning of coastal areas. In fact, shoreline position is one of the most important indicators of coastal dynamics and undergoes both instantaneous and seasonal variations that may have natural or anthropogenic causes. From this point of view recent advances in remote sensing and GIS techniques allow to estimate with great precision the shoreline changes over the years. The use of any particular method of analysis being influenced by the data sources and resources available. The paper analyzes the shoreline changes near the mouth of the Sant’Agata River (Reggio Calabria, Italy), carried out through the comparison of cartography data of the last 60 years. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the main factors influencing the coastal dynamics, in particular longshore and river transport and rainfall, in order to identify possible correlation between these factors and the shoreline changes.