| Abstract: | Abstract The southern part of the Caspian Sea shoreline in Iran with a length of 813 km has different topographic conditions. Owing to sea fluctuation, these zones have various dimensions in different times. During the last years, the Caspian Sea experienced enormous destructive rises. The historical information and tidal gauge measurements showed different ranges of sea rise from ?30 m to ?22 m from the mean sea level. On the other hand, the probable flooding zone is related to slope gradient of coasts. To help the determination of the probable flooding area owing to sea level rises, the coastal zones can be modelled using geographic information system (GIS) environment as vulnerability risk rates. These rates would be useful for making decisions in coastal management programs. This study examined different scenarios of sea rise to determine hazard-flooding rates in the coastal cities of the Mazandaran province and classified them based on vulnerability risk rates. The 1:2000 scale topographic maps of the coastal zones were prepared to extract topographic information and construct the coastal digital elevation model. With the presumption of half-metre sea rise scenarios, the digital elevation models classified eight scenarios from ?26 to ?22 m. The flooding areas in each scenario computed for 11 cities respectively. The vulnerability risk rate in each rise scenario was computed by dividing the flooded area of each scenario to city area. The results showed that in the first four scenarios, from ?26 to ?24 m, the Behshahr, Joibar, Neka and Babolsar cites would be more vulnerable than other cites. Moreover, for the second four scenarios from ?24 to ?22 m sea level rise scenario, only the coastal area of Chalous city would be vulnerable. It was also observed that the coastal region of Behshahr would be critical in total scenarios. Further studies would be necessary to complete this assessment by considering social-economic and land use information to estimate the exact hazardous and vulnerable zones. |
