COASTAL STRANDPLAIN MORPHOSTRATIGRAPHY REFLECTED IN REMOTE IMAGE-COLOR INTENSITY PATTERNS: NORTHERN BLACK AND AZOV SEA COASTS, UKRAINE

Rapid, effective, and low-cost topographic rendition and quantitative analysis of coastal landforms aids in revealing patterns of long-term (century-to-millennial-scale) trends. The morphostratigraphic record is mediated mainly by temporal patterns of wind forcing, wave climate, and storminess in a regime of changing sea level. To complement traditional ground-based methods, remote sensing technologies (satellite imagery, small UAVs) offer high-definition data. These are especially critical in regions of military conflict, such as the functionally non-tidal northern Black and Azov Sea coasts of Ukraine. To demonstrate the use of threshold-based image color-intensity (ICI) analysis of land-cover as a means of characterizing ridge-swale topography, we use shore-normal (dip-section) profiles across complex recurved strandplains at the termini of drift-aligned spits (Dovgyy, Tendra, Dzharylhach, Biryuchyy, Obytichna) and across swash-aligned cuspate forelands (Bakalska, Bilosarayska, Kryva). Along very wide (>3 km) strandplains, hundreds of beach/dune ridges have 30-50% higher ICI (0-256 grayscale) values than intervening vegetated or flooded swales. Areas of exposed bioclastic sand, as well as salt-encrusted and snow-covered surfaces, will have anomalously high grayscale values (>200). Where ridge tops are darker (lower grayscale values), an inverted ICI scale is used for visual representation of topography. In the post-war period, removal of land and sea mines will hamper field investigations (coring, trenching), necessitating reliance on non-invasive geophysical (georadar) and remote sensing techniques for coastal geological, ecological, and conservation research.