A cellular automata model for the abandoned Yellow River Estuary Delta erosion simulation

The evolution of fluvial-deltaic system has been one of the important topics in global change research. With the development of spatial science and technology, Remote Sensing(RS), Geographic Information System(GIS) and Global Positioning System(GPS) have been extensively applied to observing, interpreting and analyzing complex processes in the fluvial-deltaic system. However, modeling and predicting has proved very difficult because such system shows a wide range of different types of non-linear responses. Cellular automata (CA) are discrete, dynamical systems that are divided up into small cells with each cell taking a certain state. The basic idea of cellular automata is to reduce a complex system using certain rules into something simpler. In this paper, we present a cellular automata model for coast erosion simulation at large spatial scale. Of the factors which control the coast erosion, wind is most important because it influences both the power and direction of marine dynamics. In the CA model presented here, coast cells can be eroded by their neighboring marine cells. Due to wind effects, the erosion rate at some direction is larger than that at other direction. Such anisotropy erosion was represented by adding different probability weighting for each direction in CA rules. The model was used to simulate the erosion process of the Qingshuigou spit in the Yellow River Delta. The simulation results resemble the actual coastlines extracted from multitemporal TM images to great degree.