Climate change is impacting coastal areas causing shoreline changes across the globe. Sandbanks Provincial Park in Ontario is becoming a more popular destination for seasonal residents and visitors. The inland water bodies of the area have suffered from water level fluctuations mainly due to climate events and local situations. Remotely sensed data were used to detect coastal changes of the West and East Lakes and the vicinal shore of Lake Ontario. Results revealed a water-to-land trend due to climate change-driven forces and growing demand for water in all sectors. Wetlands were introduced as the main host of the coastal changes.
Climate change-driven forces are affecting and projected to worsen the current problems of coastal zones. The current issues of coastal ecosystems and developed infrastructures which become visible as water pollution, erosion or accretion trends, and flooding events are common parts of the coastal profiles. Climate change is acting as an extra source of stress in coastal areas introducing essential needs to reassess the management plans of water, land, and ecosystems (EPA, 2017). More specifically, increasing temperature, sea level rise, precipitation pattern changes, more frequent and intense extreme weather events, and increased atmospheric CO2 are the main outcomes of climate change in coastal areas (Paice & Chambers, 2016). In addition to this, human interventions in the coastal zone and surrounding areas like land use or landscape alterations, urban areas development, and natural resources depletion are making additional stress on coastal zones. However, most of the climate change projections revealed that the global warming and climate change trend will continue for decades (Cai et al., 2009) where mitigation efforts may moderate the intensity of climate change-driven changes.
Prince Edward County and Sandbanks Provincial Park are facing early impacts of climate change and are projected to experience more severe climate events in the future. The currently visible signals of climate change are included but not limited to hotter and longer droughts, increasing ice and windstorms, unusual flooding events, and higher levels of weather volatility (Vital Signs, 2022). Projections for the county's climate conditions predicted hotter weather, consecutive droughts and flooding events, soil erosion, and a higher risk of wildfires (Vital Signs, 2022). Therefore, conventional strategies for coastal management (especially in the case of coastal erosion) (Williams et al., 2018) are changing to a well climate-updated which intelligently weights all effective parameters. However, having a better understanding of climate change trends is a key element in developing adaptation strategies (Decock, 2020).
