**Preface to "Land Modifications and Impacts on Coastal Areas"**

Due to their favourable geomorphological characteristics and intrinsic environmental and scenic value, coastal areas have attracted humans and related settlements and activities. The contemporary population density is significantly higher in coastal areas than in continental areas, and most of the world's megacities are located in the coastal zones. According to the most recent European data, approximately 40% of the population of the European Union lives within 50 km from the sea, and less than 1% of the Mediterranean coast remains relatively unaffected by human activities. Coastal areas also play a remarkable role in supporting local economies, providing resources, assets, and opportunities for commercial, industrial, and cultural activities, as well as for marine transport and trade. Worldwide coastal zones are home to important industrial plants, including chemical, petrochemical, metallurgical, steel, mechanical, and cement facilities, as well as shipyards, military arsenals, and harbour areas with high maritime traffic. Due to intense urbanization, the morphodynamic evolution of coastal areas is directly and indirectly affected by human-related activities, which can act at both the local and watershed scales. In addition, coastal morphoevolutive dynamics are a result of the interactions among oceanic, terrestrial, and weather-driven factors, which act at different spatial (local, regional, and global scale) and temporal scales (short, medium, and long time scales). Interdisciplinary studies carried out during the last few decades have highlighted that low-lying coasts worldwide are currently subject to erosion and flooding processes, and these phenomena are expected to increase in intensity and frequency because of ongoing climate change. The long-term maintenance of all ecosystem functions offered by coastal areas and associated habitats can provide relevant support in the conservation of those ecosystem services which are able to enforce coastal resilience against extreme marine events and sea level rise; therefore, the protection of natural and anthropogenic assets of economic interests, as well as coastal infrastructure, is necessary.

Based on the assumption that accurate knowledge of the natural and anthropogenic factors acting on the coastal environments is of great significance for their effective management and for the sustainable exploitation of coastal resources, the main aim of this Special Issue, entitled "Land Modifications and Impacts on Coastal Areas", was to collect studies showing examples of the interconnection among marine/coastal and anthropogenic processes and evolution of the local landscape, shoreline modification, and coastal geo-environmental changes.

The volume includes case studies from Bulgaria, Cameroon, Ecuador, Ghana, Italy, Mexico, North Carolina (USA), and Spain, demonstrating methodological approaches applied in different regions across the world.

The first group of papers (1–6) is focused on the assessment of geomorphodynamic and hydrodynamic changes and associated effects in terms of shoreline variation and erosion, cliff retreat, Holocene landscape modification, and ecosystem distribution. The second group of papers (7–9) analyses the interactions between coastal zones and anthropogenic activities (e.g., tourism and mining) from a management perspective. Finally, the last group of papers (10–13) provides examples of how to address environmental issues (e.g., land use, forest carbon decline, and sediment pollution).

Hopefully, the scientific collection proposed here will be of interest for different categories of professionals involved in coastal studies and management to favour integrated research aimed at the sustainable use of resources offered by coastal environments. Lastly, as Guest Editors, we would like to kindly thank all the authors for their participation and contribution to the volume as well as all the reviewers that have strongly contributed to the high-quality papers published. We also strongly appreciated the support provided by the *Land* journal editorial staff.

#### **Pietro Aucelli, Angela Rizzo, Rodolfo Silva Casar´ın, and Giorgio Anfuso** *Editors*
