Land Modifications and Impacts on Coastal Areas, Second Edition

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Systems and Global Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 1445

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cádiz, 11510 Puerto Real, Spain
Interests: coastal geomorphology; coastal sceneries; coastal sensitivity to human pressure and natural processes; coastal tourism

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Guest Editor
Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Marine Sciences, University of Cádiz, 11510 Puerto Real, Spain
Interests: coastal geomorphology; coastal short-term evolution; disturbance depth; seasonal evolution; historical changes
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Guest Editor
Faculty of Sciences, Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo, Riobamba, Ecuador
Interests: environmental impacts; biodiversity conservation; environmental sustainability; water and soil pollution; tourism; environmental management
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Guest Editor
Institute of Engineering, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Circuito Escolar, Mexico City 04510, Mexico
Interests: civil engineering; ocean engineering
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Guest Editor

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Guest Editor
Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Marine and Environmental Sciences, University of Cádiz, Polígono del Río San Pedro s/n, 11510 Puerto Real, Spain
Interests: coastal geomorphology; coastal management; coastal trend; coastal evolution; dunes
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Coastal areas are zones that are extremely influenced by climatic and anthropogenic-driven factors acting both at local and global scales.

Among them, ongoing and expected land use and land cover changes, as well as catchment management activities and exploitation of natural resources, can influence the evolution of the coastal environments and landscapes, whose changes can directly and indirectly influence human economic assets and pose under pressure coastal habitats and related ecosystem services.

Interdisciplinary research has highlighted that low-lying coasts worldwide are currently subject to erosion, retreat, and flooding, and that these processes are expected to increase in intensity and frequency because of climate change. Coastal areas play a relevant role in conditioning and providing those ecosystem services that are able to enforce coastal resilience against such extreme marine events.

The identification of the driving factors inducing coastal modifications, as well as the implementation of tailored solutions for coping with the potential consequences of climate change and land modification on biodiversity, ecosystems, and anthropic activities, reveals key factors for supporting the sustainable management of coastal zones from a climate adaptation perspective.

This SI “Land Modifications and Impacts on Coastal Areas” is aimed at collecting case studies from different zones across the world whose local economies and services strongly rely on marine and coastal assets conditioning marine activities, such as tourism and fishing. With the aim of covering a comprehensive assessment of the interaction of natural and anthropic drivers inducing such modifications, we encourage authors to submit contributions in the following priority areas:

  • Coastal evolution at different spatial and temporal scales;
  • Effects of human activities on coastline dynamics;
  • Impacts of extreme events and climate-related processes;
  • Traditional and “green engineering” modalities in coastal protection;
  • Mapping of land uses and land cover variations in coastal areas;
  • Advances in coastal landscape geomorphological evolution;
  • Agricultural activities in coastal areas;
  • Effects of saltwater intrusion;
  • Coastal area over-settlement;
  • Beach litter characteristics, distributions, and behaviors in coastal landscapes;
  • Beach oiling accident numerical models, distribution, and hazard maps for coastal land management;
  • Chronic contamination of coastal water impacts on land–ocean interactions.

We look forward to your contribution.

Dr. Alexis Mooser
Prof. Dr. Giorgio Anfuso
Prof. Dr. Carlos Mestanza-Ramón
Prof. Dr. Rodolfo Silva Casarín
Prof. Dr. Hernando José Bolivar Anillo
Dr. Rosa Molina
Guest Editors

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • coastal evolution
  • land use changes
  • coastal management
  • coastal natural processes
  • climate change impacts
  • human pressure and impacts
  • coastal contamination

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 15257 KiB  
Article
Coastal Health of the Moroccan Mediterranean Coast: An Ecosystem Perspective for Coastal Management
by Noureddine Er-Ramy, Soria Azaaouaj, Driss Nachite and Giorgio Anfuso
Land 2025, 14(6), 1279; https://doi.org/10.3390/land14061279 - 15 Jun 2025
Viewed by 1195
Abstract
Coastal health assessment and diagnosis are important tools for decision-making and coastal management. In this paper, the concept of ecosystem health, which uses medical terminology to define the state of coastal health, was applied to examine and diagnose the state of the physical [...] Read more.
Coastal health assessment and diagnosis are important tools for decision-making and coastal management. In this paper, the concept of ecosystem health, which uses medical terminology to define the state of coastal health, was applied to examine and diagnose the state of the physical coastal systems of 120 coastal sites along the Moroccan Mediterranean coastline. Based on this assessment approach, five categories are defined: (1) “Good Health”, with two subdivisions: (1a) “Health Warning” and (1b) “Surface Wounds”; (2) “Minor Injury”; (3) “Major Injury”; (4) “On Life Support” and (5) “Deceased”. According to the results obtained, 38 sites (32%) were classified in the “Good Health” category, with 35 sites (29%) in the “Health Warning” and 11 (9%) in the “Surface Wounds” subdivisions; 14 sites (12%) in each of the “Minor Injury” and “Major Injury” categories; no sites (0%) in the “On Life Support” category; and 8 sites (7%) in the “Deceased” category. The considerable percentage of sites in the alert and lower categories highlights the level of degradation and ongoing loss of coastal ecosystems along the Moroccan Mediterranean coast due to the significant impact of anthropogenic processes and inadequate coastal management practices, highlighting the current degradation of its physical state and its capacity to function naturally, i.e., its ability to respond to various present and future environmental changes. The results and proposals presented in this paper offer important perspectives for the governance, preservation, and management of coastal systems and are very useful in limiting and preventing the degradation of coastal systems linked to natural processes and the development of future anthropogenic activities. In addition, they stress the importance of protecting sites classified as “healthy” and restoring those classified as “alert” or “unhealthy”, using sound management strategies based on reliable scientific data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Land Modifications and Impacts on Coastal Areas, Second Edition)
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