A beach vulnerability framework for the galapagos islands: Fusion of worldview 2 imagery, 3-d laser scanner data, and unmanned aerial vehicles

The scale and impacts of changes to beaches due to natural hazards, human use, economic development, tectonic uplift and subsidence, and climate change, especially, sea level rise and storm surges can generate persistent as well as temporary beach forms that are important to tourism, animal behavior, and conservation of diverse and fragile ecosystems. Vegetated and nonvegetated coastal areas are critical transition zones between land, freshwater habitats, lagoons, wetlands, residential communities, and tourist services as well as the marine nearshore and open ocean. Beaches and their associated environments provide essential ecosystem goods and services, including shoreline protection, nutrient cycling, fisheries resources, habitat and food, and regulation of nutrients, water, sand particles, and organisms. Sandy beaches, in particular, are an essential element of coastal geomorphology, and in the Galapagos Islands, they are critical sites for animal and human uses and interactions. As such, the preservation and management of sandy beaches are important and their sustainability crucial for island ecosystem sustainability. In this article, we describe a beach vulnerability framework to assess the Galapagos Islands, and the fusion of remote sensing data and measurement methods associated with high spatial resolution remote systems for beach assessments of sensitive and fragile settings.