The modern natural tombolos of Greece

ABSTRACT

Formation and evolution processes of natural tombolos involve many interrelated geomorphological, sedimentary, oceanographic and anthropogenic factors, making their measurement and simulation an extremely difficult task. The present study attempts to fill this knowledge gap by detecting the natural tombolos in Greece, formed in the current sea level, through the statistical analysis of their morphometric and socio-environmental parameters. In addition, the long-term evolution of these coastal depositional landscapes has been determined by comparing old aerial photos taken in 1945 or 1960 and recent satellite images taken from 2020 to 2022. Two thirds of the twenty tombolos studied are subject to erosion, while eight are sporadically destroyed and turned into salients. The Greek tombolos are mildly or heavily exploited for touristic purposes, and fourteen of them are protected by national and international environmental laws. Future studies need to focus on the unstable type of these coastal landforms that are modified from tombolo to salient and vice versa to obtain helpful information about the morphodynamic conditions necessary for their evolution.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Sandy isthmus
• forelands
• coastal erosion
• shoreline displacement
• coastal geomorphology
• Holocene

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge support of this work by the project “Development of the infrastructure, human resources and marine research and innovation of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) in the Region of S. Aegean” (MIS 5045792) which is implemented under the Action “Enhancement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure”, funded by the Operational Programme “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014-2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund).

The authors thank Stelios Trikkas for providing the aerial photo of the Apokrisi tombolo, Kythnos island, used for the background of the graphical abstract and the five anonymous reviewers that, through their fruitful comments and suggestions, improved the quality of the paper significantly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study can be made available, upon reasonable request from the corresponding author at [email protected]

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the ”Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014-2020) [MIS 5045792].