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Globally, coastal zones, rivers and riverine areas, and deltas carry enormous values for ecosystems, socio-economic, and environmental perspectives. These often highly populated areas are generally significantly different from interior hinterlands in terms of population density, economic activities, and geophysical and ecological processes. Geospatial technologies are widely used by scholars from multiple disciplines to understand the dynamic nature of shoreline changes globally. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review to identify and interpret research patterns and themes related to shoreline change detection from 2000 to 2021. Two databases, Web of Science and Scopus, were used to identify articles that investigate shoreline change analysis using geospatial technique such as remote sensing and GIS analysis capabilities (e.g., the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS). Between the years 2000 and 2021, we initially found 1622 articles, which were inspected for suitability, leading to a final set of 905 articles for bibliometric analysis. For systematic analysis, we used Rayyan—a web-based platform used for screening literature. For bibliometric network analysis, we used the CiteSpace, Rayyan, and VOSviewer software. The findings of this study indicate that the majority of the literature originated in the USA, followed by India. Given the importance of protecting the communities living in the riverine areas, coastal zones, and delta regions, it is necessary to ask new research questions and apply cutting-edge tools and technology, such as machine learning approach and GeoAI, to fill the research gaps on shoreline change analysis. Such approaches could include, but are not limited to, centimeter level accuracy with high-resolution satellite imagery, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and point cloud data for both local and global level shoreline change and analysis. 

This study investigates coastal erosion, revetment as a shoreline protection strategy, and human perceptions of revetments in the Lower Meghna estuary of the Bangladesh where new revetments were recently constructed. Questions addressed were: (1) How do rates of shoreline change vary over the period 2011–2019? (2) Did new revetments effectively halt erosion and what were the magnitudes of erosion change? (3) How have erosion rates changed for shorelines within 1 km of revetments, and (4) How do households perceive revetments? High-resolution Planet Lab imagery was used to quantify shoreline change rates. Analysis of household survey data assessed human perceptions of the revetment’s desirability and efficacy. Results revealed high rates of erosion for 2011–2019 with declining erosion after 2013. New revetments effectively halted erosion for protected shorelines. Significant spatial trends for erosion rates existed for shorelines adjacent to revetments. Survey respondents overwhelmingly had positive attitudes about a desire for revetment protection; however, upstream respondents expressed a strong majority perception that revetment acts to make erosion worse. Highlights of the research include integration of remote sensing with social science methods, the timing of the social survey shortly after revetment construction, and results showing significant erosion change upstream and downstream of new revetments. 

Understanding seasonal precipitation input into river basins is important for linking large-scale climate drivers with societal water resources and the occurrence of hydrologic hazards such as floods and riverbank erosion. Using satellite data at 0.25-degree resolution, spatial patterns of monsoon (June-July-August-September) precipitation variability between 1983 and 2015 within the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) river basin are analyzed with Principal Component (PC) analysis and the first three modes (PC1, PC2 and PC3) are related to global atmospheric-oceanic fields. PC1 explains 88.7% of the variance in monsoonal precipitation and resembles climatology with the center of action over Bangladesh. The eigenvector coefficients show a downward trend consistent with studies reporting a recent decline in monsoon rainfall, but little interannual variability. PC2 explains 2.9% of the variance and shows rainfall maxima to the far western and eastern portions of the basin. PC2 has an apparent decadal cycle and surface and upper-air atmospheric height fields suggest the pattern could be forced by tropical South Atlantic heating and a Rossby wave train stemming from the North Atlantic, consistent with previous studies. Finally, PC3 explains 1.5% of the variance and has high spatial variability. The distribution of precipitation is somewhat zonal, with highest values at the southern border and at the Himalayan ridge. There is strong interannual variability associated with PC3, related to the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Next, we perform a hydroclimatological downscaling, as precipitation attributed to the three PCs was averaged over the Pfafstetter level-04 sub-basins obtained from the World Wildlife Fund (Gland, Switzerland). While PC1 was the principal contributor of rainfall for all sub-basins, PC2 contributed the most to rainfall in the western Ganges sub-basin (4524) and PC3 contributed the most to the rainfall in the northern Brahmaputra (4529). Monsoon rainfall within these two sub-basins were the only ones to show a significant relationship (negative) with ENSO, whereas four of the eight sub-basins had a significant relationship (positive) with sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical South Atlantic. This work demonstrates a geographic dependence on climate teleconnections in the GBM that deserves further study.