Yasur-Landau et al./Mediterranean Resilience, 3. A Multi-Method Approach for Studying Environmental-Human Interaction

Shallow marine, atmosphere, and land systems converge at the coastal zone, acting as agents that modify its morphological and lithostratigraphic characteristics through time. This interface is also known to be rich with archaeological remains and ancient constructions, remnants of prehistoric and historic civilizations whose population was drawn to the moderate temperatures and abundance of resources. Thus, a systematic surface/subsurface mapping and assessment of proxies embedded in the shallow marine and terrestrial parts of the coast are critical for reconstructing paleolandscape changes and can serve as the basis for examining environment-human interactions through time. Here, a workflow is proposed for reconstructing the land-sea interface in four dimensions (X, Y, Z, t). The proposed workflow builds on an ongoing project conducted along the Carmel Coast in northern Israel by establishing an onshore-offshore chronostratigraphic correlation through an amalgamation of elevation raster grids and subsurface data collected by remote sensing techniques, as well as lithological datasets, all acquired by surveying the shallow shelf and terrestrial parts of the coast. The applied methodology and spatiotemporal integration discussed here could be of use in other multidisciplinary investigations conducted in similar high-energy coastal settings aimed at evaluating past environmental changes and targeting the location of prehistoric archaeological sites. Furthermore, this protocol can be utilized for assessing human reaction, adaptation, and resilience to environmental changes.