Land Use, Erosion, and Habitat Mapping on an Atlantic Barrier Island, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina

Abstract

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Sullivan's Island is a barrier island residential community in Charleston County, South Carolina. Barrier islands are dynamic landforms constantly changing shape and position, and are essential in protecting the region from hurricanes and other forces of nature. Approximately 86% of the United States coastline is experiencing a net loss of shorelines, however Sullivan's Island is unusual in that during the past three decades the island has experienced accretion as opposed to erosion. In February of 1991, Sullivan's Island Town Council placed approximately 90 acres of accreted beachfront into a protective easement a-ecting both residents and tourists. This project was designed to survey and establish information of the land use and the conservation easement. As part of the project the erosion and accretion history over the past 60 years was investigated. This project used two basic forms of data collection: modern day and historic aerial photographic analysis of the barrier island's shape and remote sensing analysis of satellite data, from ASTER and IKONOS, to map the land use, land coverage and habitats on the island and the easement area. This map shows the land use of Sullivan's Island in relation to the 2006 aerial photography with the di-erent footprints of Sullivan's Island from 1941 to 2006 overlain to show the island's accretion and erosion patterns.