11th Workshop Coastal Zone New remote sensing applications for low-lying coasts (including deltaic and estuarine environments)

Low-lying coasts (including deltas and estuaries) are among the most dynamic and vulnerable geophysical systems on Earth. They host dense populations, critical infrastructure, productive ecosystems, and large stores of carbon, yet they face accelerating pressures from sea-level rise, subsidence, sediment supply alteration, storm surges, compound flooding, pollution, and habitat loss. Recent advances in satellite, airborne, and in-situ sensing (paired with machine learning and physics-aware modelling) have opened new frontiers for monitoring and understanding these environments at the spatial and temporal scales required for effective management.

The proposed workshop will showcase the state of the art and emerging remote sensing applications for low-lying coasts. It is dedicated to researchers, students, data providers, public authorities, NGOs, and private-sector practitioners to exchange methods, datasets, and tools, compare best practices across regions and identify gaps and opportunities for coordinated activities. The proposed theme aligns directly with the SIG on Coastal Zones by focusing on practical, reproducible techniques that inform risk assessment, ecosystem stewardship, climate adaptation, and nature-based solutions.

The workshop targets end-to-end coastal applications, from observation and processing to validation, interpretation, and decision support, spanning global to local scales. It aims to: 

1. Present cutting-edge methods for observing hydrodynamics, morphology, water quality and coastal vegetation in low-relief settings.
2. Highlight novel uses of recent and upcoming missions (e.g. SWOT, Sentinel-1/2, Landsat, NISAR, commercial constellations) and synergies with modelling through e.g. calibration or data assimilation.
3. Share open workflows, automated processing chains, and benchmarking datasets that enable routine monitoring and forecasting.

List of topics

• Hydro-morphodynamics & Water-Level Dynamics
  • River flow, tide interactions, estuarine circulation, and backwater effects mapped with SWOT, altimetry and SAR; calibration/validation with tide/water level gauges.
  • Surface water extent retrievals; floodplain connectivity.

• Shoreline, Topography, Bathymetry and Erosion/Accretion 
  • Automated shoreline extraction from optical, multispectral and SAR imagery; uncertainty quantification.
  • Wave-runup/storm impact indicators; beach volume change; coastal topography (SfM with Pléiades, PlanetScope – Dove-C, SuperDove) and bathymetry (water colour, wave-crest depth inversion).

• Vertical Land Motion & Subsidence
  • InSAR time series and GNSS integration for natural and anthropogenic subsidence in deltas and reclaimed land; implications for relative sea-level rise and flood hazard.

• Water Quality, Sediment and Biogeochemistry
  • Retrievals of SPM, POM, turbidity, coloured dissolved organic matter, and chlorophyll in optically complex coastal waters; atmospheric correction advances.
  • Detection of harmful algal blooms, hypoxia risk.

• Coastal Vegetation & Blue Carbon
  • Wetland, mangrove and seagrass mapping; phenology and resilience metrics from dense time series. 
  • Biomass, productivity, and carbon stock/change estimation combining SAR and multispectral sensors; disturbance and restoration monitoring.

• Methods & Enablers
  • Physics-informed and hybrid AI models.
  • Open, reproducible pipelines in cloud environments (e.g. scalable time-series analysis, QA/QC).
  • Data fusion and assimilation with hydrodynamic and ecosystem models; uncertainty propagation and benchmarking.
  • Community standards, FAIR data and interoperability.

Scientific Committee of the Workshop

Organizers