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Kakroodi, A.A.; Kroonenberg, S.B.; Goorabi, A., and Yamani, M., 2014. Shoreline response to rapid 20th century sea-level change along the Iranian Caspian Coast. The Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the world, is characterized by rapid sea-level changes. This provides a real physical model of coastal response to rapid sea-level change in a period of just a few years, which might take a millennium along oceanic coasts. Between 1929 and 1995, the Caspian sea level experienced the last cycle, with a range of ±3 m. This caused disastrous effects along the coast and destroyed many buildings, roads, farms, and other human property. During the preceding 48 years of sea-level fall, a large area of the sea bottom emerged, which was then used for the development of residential zones. That area had to be abandoned when sea level rose by almost 3 m in a period of 18 years. With the use of LANDSAT data, we calculated total shoreline shifts in 22 littoral cells, each cell containing three transects over a 3-km distance. Both landward and seaward shifts occur during rapid sea-level rise between 1977 and 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kakroodi, A.A.; Kroonenberg, S.B., and Naderi Bonab, M. 2014. Short- and long-term development of the Miankaleh Spit, southeast Caspian Sea, Iran. The development of the 60-km-long Miankaleh Spit in the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea has been studied in two different timescales. At the start of the twentieth century 3 m sea-level cycle, the spit already existed, but it emerged prominently during the lowstand in the late 1970s, and drowned and fell apart into several islands during the following highstand that culminated in 1995. The analysis of core data and sedimentological analyses (grain size, biofacies, carbonate content, heavy mineral, and magnetic susceptibility) show that the Miankaleh Spit and the Gorgan Bay did not yet exist during the well-known 2600-2300 cal. YBP highstand, and at that time waves and longshore currents deposited barrier systems along the mainland coast. During the lowstand, deltas from rivers draining the eastern Alborz Mountains extended much more westward than at present. It was only during the last major highstand in the Little Ice Age that the present-day Miankaleh Spit was formed by eastward progradation caused by strong longshore currents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]