The Coastie Initiative

• Main Authors: Cherry, Nathan, George, Libby, Smith, Alex, Houser, Chris
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholarship at UWindsor 2022
• Subjects: Canada; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/uwilldiscover/2022/2022Day1/26; https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/context/uwilldiscover/article/1822/viewcontent/38604_The_Coastie_Initiative.pdf

Coastline change is an ever-increasing area of interest with a multitude of research opportunities. The Coastie Initiative was developed with Parks Canada to crowdsource the collection of regular imagery of coastal morphology, building a large dataset for tracking shoreline change. Citizens can partake in this growing program by submitting a ‘Coastie’ through the web-based platform. At every site, a phone cradle, designed to standardize images, is accompanied by an informational panel and a QR code. Visitors can use the QR code to quickly access the submission wizard. After submission, the image is saved and awaits classification by researchers. The intended development of the project includes an achievement system to promote user retention, an automated classification system to eliminate manual labelling, and an ocean literacy stream as an effort to educate and inform the public. The initiative was launched during the fall of 2021 with 5 locations. The Coastie program is a collaboration that has developed from the global CoastSnap Community Beach Monitoring movement that began in Australia in 2017. Using the early prototype dataset, coastal change can be quantified from repeat geo-rectified images. These capture deposition/erosion of the beach and dune topography in response to ambient environmental conditions or higher energy storm events. This dataset will serve as a baseline to monitor how coastal systems respond to climate change, including sea level rise, change in storm activity, and reduction in sea ice coverage. The Coastie Initiative allows citizen scientists to influence coastline exploration participating alongside motivated researchers.