Beach 'Scenic beauty’ versus human pressures and natural coastal processes: an innovative approach with case studies from Spain, Bulgaria, France and Italy

Resumen

The intensive and fast-growing use of beaches for leisure brought to the transformation, over the past decades, of many unspoiled coasts in unsustainable linear cities of strong economic relevance. Today, barely 15% of worldwide coastal sceneries remain intact from human intrusion. It is also estimated that roughly half of sand beaches may disappear by 2100 because of climate change consequences (coupled with the ongoing urbanization process). In others words, natural beaches are presently critically endangered and are disappearing. This remark is even truer for beautiful coastal areas since their capacity of attracting visitors, i.e., Scenery, is one of the five parameters of greatest relevance in beach choice. With that in mind, the emphasis of this Ph.D. project was placed on three major issues: Scenic beauty, Scenic sensitivity and Beach management. For these purposes, several coastal sectors that sum a total coastal length 3000 km along four distinctive European countries, were chosen: Spain (Andalusia and the Balearic Islands), northern France, Bulgaria and southern Italy, all standing out for exhibiting a wide variety of coastal sceneries. In the quest of identifying most attractive sites slightly or not affected by human activities, a total of 149 sites, mainly located in remote areas, were selected after field assessments. Scenic beauty was evaluated by means of the Coastal Scenic Evaluation System (CSES), a semi quantitative method based on 26 physical and human parameters and fuzzy logic mathematics. Respecting.Scenic sensitivity a method was proposed to determine sensitivity to human pressures and natural processes in a climate change context, firstly tested in Andalusia, Spain (29 sites, Chapter 2) and, then, applied in the Balearic Islands, Spain (52 sites, Chapter 3), and Bulgaria (16 sites, Chapter 4). Beach management implications on coastal scenery was the focus of the research carried out in France (16 sites, Chapter 5) and Italy (36 sites, Chapter 6).