Vulnerability assessment of coastal erosion along the Abandoned Yellow River Delta of northern Jiangsu, China

The Abandoned Yellow River Delta of northern Jiangsu faces serious erosion hazard due to global climate change, sea- level rise, human activities and shortage of sediments. In this present work, coastal erosion hazard and vulnerability level along the Abandoned Yellow River Delta have been assessed with the aid of RS and GIS. The coastal vulnerability index (CVI) is used to map the relative vulnerability in the study area. Shoreline change rate, depth contours change rate, coastal slope, subaqueous slope, sedimentary dynamic environment, suspended sediment concentration, mean high tidal height, utilization of coastal types and coastal development suitability are used as the evaluation indexes to assess the coastal erosion hazard and vulnerability level. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to calculate the weights of each evaluation index. The results show that the Abandoned Yellow River Delta presents a high coastal erosion vulnerability level. The vulnerability level indicates that over 50% of the study area presents a high and very high vulnerable level, and over 75% of coastal area presents above the moderate vulnerable level. The coastal erosion vulnerability map prepared from this study can provide reference for the coastal zone protection, disaster prevention and mitigation, proper planning and management of this coastal region.