Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 56, 2009

Journal of Coastal Research SI 56 1233 - 1236 ICS2009 (Proceedings) Portugal ISSN 0749-0258

Contributing Coastal Zone Management by GIS Analyses the Case of Finnish Marine Coast

R. Kalliola and L. Laurila Dept. of geography University of Turku, FI 20014, Turku Finland riskall@utu.fi

ABSTRACT

KALLIOLA, R. and LAURILA, L., 2009. Contributing coastal zone management by GIS analyses the case of Finnish marine coast. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 56 (Proceedings of the 10th International Coastal Symposium), 1233 1236. Lisbon, Portugal, ISSN 0749-0258. Coastal zone management requires reliable and tangible spatial information as basis. The marine coast of most of Finland is especially fragmented due to the curved shoreline and the presence of wide archipelago belts with tens of thousands of islands of variable sizes. We present here how GIS analysis can be used to produce such spatial data sets that have direct use value for the coastal stakeholders, planners and decision-makers. Tailored products applying the existing data resources as basis enable the making of holistic regional models and also allow the zooming in when details of individual shores should be seen. In this presentation we focus particularly on the modelling of the neighbour influences of buildings (summer cottages) and other anthropogenic structures in the coastal zone, as these are in the front of the shore development often inducing disagreements among the different stakeholder groups in the coastal areas. We have developed a unique GIS based work chain to produce data on shore occupation on a regular basis. This methodology helps the coastal managers to see what is happening over the times at wide spatial extensions. We furthermore reinforce the potential of online map and other information services in the internet, contributing the dissemination of coastal information for anyone interested. ADDITIONAL INDEX WORDS: Coastal zone, shore development, Baltic Sea, map server

INTRODUCTION Responsible coastal planning should apply information about the

physical environment and the diverse use practices and development pressures in the local level. Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is an example of a process that should deal with the physical environment and human activities in this manner. In this process, reliable geographical data are indispensable to assess the influence areas and impacts of the diverse coastal activities.

In those coastal areas where the shoreline is particularly long and curved it is challenging to determine precisely the degree and locations of human activities in the coastal zone. Spatial analysis should be applied to assess in these areas the spatial patterns of shore occupation and development. In the department of Geography of the University of Turku, we have been developing such analyses for the conditions of the Finnish marine coast from since the 1980s (Gran et al. 1999, Laurila and Kalliola 2008a).

Our earlier analyses of the land use patterns in the coastal zone were mainly based on visual map surveys and subjective interpretations. This work was laborious to practice and moreover, not easy to replicate equally by another person. Repetitive surveys are however needed for the monitoring of changes taking place in the shore environment in a reliable manner. For this, spatial modelling techniques have now been developed. Whilst the technical details of these developments have already been reported elsewhere (Laurila & Kalliola 2007), the present paper describes

their basic ideas and evaluates the utility of the GIS-based approach to facilitate coastal management.

Spatial data and analysis methods have witnessed dramatic improvements in both quantitative and qualitative terms during the recent years. For this, also the societal expectations for increasingly sophisticated data sets are ever increasing. Coastal maps should be simultaneously far extending and detailed, spatially accurate and thematically correct, and easily comprehensible and available for anyone interested.

Our study area in the marine coats of Finland exemplifies a very challenging type of region to address by spatial analysis. The Finnish Baltic coast is physically diverse and from the human perspective it is a highly beloved natural area for various types of recreational purposes. When such a unique nature co-occurs with conflicting development pressures, problems may arise. Until the present the planning and management of this area has been piece-wise rather than based on any comprehensive approach, being administratively divided between many different coastal municipalities.

Much of the Baltic Sea coast in Finland is actually made by an archipelago that comprises of tens of thousands of islands with their unique sizes and forms. In many areas the shore is highly curved and detail-rich (Figure 1), and additionally the Finns have built their houses and saunas wide across the coastal zone near the seashore (Figure 2). For these reasons the challenge for analyzing the status and environmental influences of the shore development is immense.

1233

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 56, 2009

Contributing Coastal Zone Management by GIS Analyses

Figure 1. Example of some typical shores in the SW Finnish coast. Grey areas are rocky shores and in the dark areas forests growing on clay or till extend until the shore. Buildings are scattered along the shoreline

Figure 2. Example of a building near the shore, and the typical landscape of the inner parts of the Finnish archipelago coast

SHORE DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS We developed a GIS based procedure to model the distribution

of buildings and their environmental influences along the shores of the Finnish marine coast. The datasets used in the process were:

o Shoreline data (1:10 000) of the National Land Survey, edited by the Finnish Environment Institute.

o Data on buildings and residences. The spatial data consists of the coordinates of the midpoints of the buildings.

o Topographic database of the National Land Survey. This is used as complementary spatial data to locate for example industrial areas, artificial shores as harbour constructions, embankments and elderly summer cottages missing from the other registers.

o Nature resource areas and Natura 2000 areas. Data from the Finnish Environment Institute and Metshallitus.

The methodology rests on the use of buffer and overlay operations in GIS (Figure 3). A buffer of 100 metres was used as an approximation of the influence area of the buildings and some other human constructions. The buffers made around every such object were then overlaid with the shoreline and the proportion of the shoreline lying inside the buffer zones was labelled as developed, whilst those outside of it were considered as free.

Figure 3. Example of the use of buffers of 100 m radius for the determination of developed seashore areas

The analyses were made for the entire Finnish coastline of 37.626 kilometres. Out of this length, one fifth is made by islands that are smaller than one hectare in size, which indicates the very detailed scale required in this analysis.

The accuracy of the thus produced shore development maps was assessed by field surveys and by interviewing the environmental authorities of the shore municipalities. The results confirmed that the used buffer produced a robust but fairly satisfactory approximation of the environmental influence areas of the most typical shore constructions.

STATISTICS AND MAPS TO ASSIST COASTAL PLANNING

The results were compiled into tabular and cartographic forms separately for each of the coastal municipalities. Considering the entire Finnish marine coast, 41% of the shoreline was developed. This proportion however varies considerably between the different municipalities (Figure 4). The most occupied shores are in such areas that can be easily reached from the main cities of the coastal zone. Some 84% of the shores in the nature protection areas are free, i.e. beyond the immediate influences of the major anthropogenic constructions.

These analyses reveal to the situation of the year of 2005. As similar analyses have been done also earlier, it is tempting to compare the most modern results with those of the past inventories. In the majority of municipalities, plenty of new summer cottages have been constructed and the proportion of free shores has been dramatically decreasing. However, in some cases also reverse development was detected but we interpret this difference to rather reflect a methodological artefact than true diminishing of the shore development.

This observation takes us to consider the importance of calibrated and transparent methods in the inventory of shore development. Only when the methods are rigid and replicable do the results allow the creation of reliable change data from subsequent years. To facilitate this for the future years, we have archived all the critical datasets of the most recent inventory to the data within the university.

1234

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 56, 2009

Kalliola and Laurila

Figure 4. Coropleth map showing the percentages of the developed shores, i.e. those in the influence area of shore buildings or other major anthropogenic constructions, in the coastal municipalities of Finland

DISCUSSION The benefits of using GIS in coastal planning are obvious for

many different perspectives. Among them is the analytical approach that was exemplified by the present case study. Our research revealed how a relatively simple analytical procedure, when applied equally over a wide geographical area, produces unique data for the coastal planners. In the later use of the produced data further GIS operations could be easily incorporated to link these results with other data sources that describe the physical and cultural environs of the coastal region (see e.g. Tolvanen & Suominen 2005, Ekebom & Erkkil 2003).

Another obvious benefit of use of GIS is in the possibility to make the entire data analysis chain transparent and thus also replicable. This notion takes the coastal GIS analyses further into the arena of environmental information infrastructures about the coastal environments (Laihonen et al, 2003, Tolvanen & Kalliola 2008). An example of the diversity of the potential uses of coastal spatial data is the integration of our shore development data into the SW Finnish spatial data portal Lounaispaikka (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Shore development data implemented in the spatial data portal Lounaispaikka in SW Finland. The background image is an aerial photograph, which is overlain by the pale-looking lines showing the distributions of the developed shores

The third obvious benefit of the GIS based coastal analysis is in

its ability to facilitate the dialogue between the different stakeholder groups concerned about the coastal region. It is a common fact that the coastal areas tend to be in the interest of various types of actors, and that the opinions of the different stakeholder groups may be conflicting. Although GIS data and analyses do not solve any problems automatically their production by reliable methods and their free availability through the internet map servers is valuable. This way, participatory planning has a strong and reliable ground to grow on, as all groups can access the same information resources. Similarly to also other types of natural areas (Kalliola et al. 2008), the dialogue between the coastal stakeholder groups and the researcher community is more fruitful when each party has access to the same basic data.

CONCLUSION The study of coastal development along the Finnish marine

coast revealed the high potential of GIS analyses in coastal inventories, management and planning. By making the data widely available through the internet the dialogue between the different coastal stakeholder groups can be reinforced by shared information resources.

LITERATURE CITED EKEBOM, J. and ERKKIL, A., 2003. Using aerial photography

for identification of marine and coastal habitats under the E.U.s Habitats Directive. Aquatic Conservation Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 13, 287304.

GRAN, O.; ROTO, M. & LAURILA, L., 1995. Environment and land use in the shore zone of the coast of Finland. Publicationes institute geographhici Universitatis Turkuensis 160, 1-76.

KALLIOLA, R.; TOIVONEN, T.; MIYAKAWA, V. and MAVILA, M., 2008. Open access to information bridges science and development in Amazonia: lessons of the SIAMAZONIA service. Environmental Research Letters 3: 034004. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/3/3/034004.

LAIHONEN, P.; RNK, M; TOLVANEN, H. and KALLIOLA, R., , 2003. Geospatially structured biodiversity information as a component of a regional biodiversity clearing house. Biodiversity and Conservation 12: 1, 103120.

1235

Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 56, 2009

Contributing Coastal Zone Management by GIS Analyses

LAURILA, L. & KALLIOLA, R., 2007. Modelling the development of seashore areas in the marine coasts of Finland UTU Marine Shore Development Data. UTU-LCC publications 13, 37-40. http://utu-lcc.utu.fi/publications/Vol_13.pdf.

LAURILA, L. and KALLIOLA, R. 2008. Rakennetut meren rannat. Ympristministerin raportteja 3/2008. 56 p

TOLVANEN, H. and KALLIOLA, R., 2008. A structured approach to geographical information in coastal research and management. Ocean & Coastal Management 51: 6, 485494.

TOLVANEN, H. and SUOMINEN, T., 2005. Quantification of openness and wave activity in archipelago environments. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 64: 23, 436446.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank Harri Tolvanen, Tapio Suominen and other members

of the UTU coastal geography group for valuable collaboration and discussions.

1236