Reconstruction of landforms using historical and recent aerial photographs for landscape evolution of coastal dune dynamics

The Çukurova Delta Complex, which is located in the south of Turkey along the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea, is the second-largest delta system in the Mediterranean. The Seyhan River flowed 10 km east from its current course until at least the 16^th Century, and shifted to its current course in the west and began to build the modern delta and the youngest foredune ridges were formed by a combination of aeolian and littoral processes. Morphometrics of foredunes greatly contributes to understanding the relationship between aeolian and marine dynamics. High-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) are important in examining the geomorphic features of foredune ridges because the low-relief delta environment makes it difficult to use standard topographic maps. Therefore, in the study, the morphometric features, including foredune height, foredune slope, foredune width, the space between foredune ridges, and beach width of the ridges within the study area were extracted from the DEM and orthophotograph of historical and recent aerial photographs. Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques allow for the reconstruction of present and past landforms, and to detect long-term topographic changes in the low-relief areas using historical and modern aerial images. A total of 27 aerial photographs were acquired from flights in AD 2016 covering the study area with a ground sampling distance of 0.3 m, while 13 archive analog aerial photographs with a ground sampling distance of 0.7 m were available from flights in AD 1950. Analysis of SfM-derived high-resolution DEM for the Seyhan Delta shows at least 25 foredune ridges inland for 4 km. It is very important to know the origin and morphodynamics of ridges in terms of revealing the coastal evolution of the Seyhan Delta. Since these ridges preserve past shoreline positions Holocene foredune ridges in the study area can be used to help reconstruct the nature of paleoenvironmental change.