About 80% of the world’s oceanic shorelines include diverse types of cliffed and rocky coasts: plunging cliffs, bluffs backing beaches and rocky shore platforms. In combination, approximately 60% of the world’s population lives within 60 km of the coast. Rapidly retreating soft cliffs may be found worldwide and are particularly vulnerable to changes in the forcing factors. The study and analysis of the rate of change in shoreline position through time is important or even imperative for coastal management. The development of cliff erosion predictive models is mainly limited to geomorphological data because of the complex interactions between physical‐chemical processes acting simultaneously in time and space that result in large scale variations. Current historical extrapolation models use historical recession data, but different environments with the same historical values can produce identical annual retreat characteristics despite the potential responses to a changing environment being unequal. For that reason, process‐response models (PRMs) are necessary to provide quantitative predictions of the effects of natural and human‐induced changes that cannot be predicted using other models. Several models are explained and discussed, including a process‐response model, based on real data at Holderness Coast (UK).

Here we provide valuable information about the palaeoenvironmental evolution of Southwestern Mediterranean region during the last ca. 320 ka through a biomarker-based study of the longest continuous continental Quaternary record in the Iberian Peninsula. The n-alkane content and δ¹³C values of these lipids were measured in 300 samples taken from the uppermost 55 m of the Padul Basin (PB) record. The δ¹³C signal of long-chain n-alkanes was a reliable proxy for C₄/C₃ terrestrial vegetation composition in the basin, as emergent macrophytes made a minor contribution to these homologues. In contrast, the δ¹³C values of C₂₃ and C₂₅ alkanes reflected mainly phases of increasing water level of the lacustrine/palustrine water body since aquatic macrophytes contain a large proportion of these compounds. Low δ¹³C values were attributed to a marked contribution of plants using the C₃ photosynthetic pathway. Intervals with the lowest δ¹³C values were attributed to an important input of angiosperms, although they could also be explained by changing environmental conditions or environmental stress, as large shifts in δ¹³C occurred in long-chain homologues typically abundant in terrestrial plants. Shifts in δ¹³C of medium-chain homologues reflected limited CO₂ availability induced by water temperature, salinity, pH, enhanced productivity, low atmospheric pCO2, or stagnant barriers, rather than the abundance of aquatic macrophytes. Our results also suggest enhanced isotopic fractionation during lipid synthesis by aquatic macrophytes within MIS 7 and the Holocene, leading to increased δ¹³C values of bulk OM and of long-chain n-alkanes. Hence, the δ¹³C logs were ideal for studying the contribution of aquatic macrophytes to the lipid and isotopic composition of sediments and for the reconstruction of palaeoenvironmental conditions. These results confirmed that C₄ plants had a low presence in the PB. Comparison with biomarker analysis and pollen data of the PB and other records of the Southwestern Mediterranean revealed that δ¹³C values of bulk OM and of long-chain n-alkanes reflected global climatic oscillations during MIS 7 and the episodes Heinrich Events 3, 2, 1 and Younger Dryas.

Despite today's extensive remote sensing imagery with all kinds of sensors, the use of old aerial imagery is still importantin the study of slowly evolving land processes to reconstruct past landscape forms. Numerous organisations sharephotogrammetric data in public repositories, offering opportunities to exploit them to identify historical, natural andanthropogenic topographic changes, which is particularly interesting if they are difficult to access areas, possibly affectedsince historic times by climate change and other geodynamic processes. This work proposes and applies a workflow basedon the SfM-MVS photogrammetric technique to 22 and 33 historical aerial photographs of the English FIDASE (1956/57)and Argentinean Navy (1968) flights, scanned at 1016dpi and 96dpi, black and white, of Deception Island (South Shetland,Antarctica). The photogrammetric processing controls the threshold values of the reconstruction uncertainties andprojection accuracy. The 3D point clouds obtained are geroreferenced with 37 ground control points (GCP) geographicallypositioned in a QuickBird2 satellite image over island areas not affected by volcanism. The quality of the DTM is controlledby comparison with the 1960 topographic map 1:25000 of the island, which allows the volumes of material emitted in thevolcanic eruption of 1967 to be evaluated. The results obtained improve considerably and extend the set of resultscompared to those obtained by classical contour line digitizing. The applied method, the DTM and orthomosaic of 1956and 1968 presented will allow us to evaluate, together with the analysis applied to later historical flights, English 1979 andChilean 1986, the recent changes produced by the recent volcanism, the local external geodynamics, the possible climaticdeterioration and the scope of current human activity from 1956 to the present day.