Challenge addressed: Mapping Coastal Erosion Over Time (Challenge 4)
Live Demo: http://13.239.135.65/
Youtube Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLYABdl0ap4&feature=youtu.be
Coastal Stories is a webapp designed to promote understanding of how coastal erosion is affecting Indigenous communities. As the land changes, sacred sites along the coast can be directly impacted. Understanding the proximity of erosion (and its rate of change) around sites is crucial for preserving and maintaining them. It is not only the physical sites that need to be preserved; the cultural heritage, history and stories associated with these sites (and the land around them) add rich context to the environmental change we see along Australia's coasts.
In our demo of Coastal Stories, we have focussed on uniting Earth observation data and the cultural heritage of the Arakwal people to provide a first point of disucssion around how coastal change can impact Indigenous communities. By measuring the location of the shoreline over a decade of Landsat data, we were able to estimate the rate of change in the shoreline and display it along the coast around Cavanbah (Byron Bay). We have also included points to indicate sacred sites of the Arakwal people, with a brief description of the site's importance and a link to more information on their website (http://arakwal.com.au/). Finally, in addition to displaying threat of change for erosion, we've also provided the ability to click anywhere on the map and view a movie of the Landsat data for that area; this can be used to visualise coastal change directly. The channel between North and South Stradbroke Islands provides an excellent example of this.
While the challenge was proposed by members of the Awabakal community in Newcastle, we focussed on Cavanbah and the stories of the Arakwal people due the availability of Geoscience Australia's Landsat Collection 3 dataset (see https://explorer.sandbox.dea.ga.gov.au/ga_ls5t_ard_3). Processing of the Landsat Collection 3 upgrade is currently ongoing, and once available, it would be possible to expand Coastal Stories to measure the rate of coastal erosion around the entire Australian coastline. This would be coupled with an expansion of the website that would allow Indigenous communities to submit and curate their own sacred sites and stories about the land. Coastal Stories would then become a tool to preserve and share the cultural heritage of coastal indigenous communities, as well as allowing them to advocate for the protection and maintainence of sites threatened by coastal change.
The change in coastline is the work of Robbi Bishop-Taylor as part of Digital Earth Australia:
For more information, refer to the journal articcal Bishop-Taylor et al. 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2019.03.006)