Coastlines of the Baltic Sea – Zones of Competition Between Geological Processes and a Changing Climate: Examples from the Southern Baltic - The Baltic Sea Basin - page 150

7.1 Introduction
The problem of sea level change is one of the most important topics of scientific
research programmes and intergovernmental discussions (Metz et al. 2007 ) . The
anthropogenic driving forces and future development of global sea level have been
described by Cubasch ( 2001 ) . In addition, scenarios of secular sea level rise have
to be superimposed with the effect of short-term events as storm surges. While
long-term (secular) sea level scenarios are derived from climate and neotectonic
modelling, events have to be described by empirical data. For an effective coastal
defence and catastrophe management, local authorities need reliable information
of future development along coastal zones. For this, geoscientists have to take into
consideration not only global sea level changes but also regional vertical crustal
movement, coastal morphogenesis, and regional/seasonal characteristics in climati-
cally driven water level regularities. New results have been published during the last
two years. For instance, a prediction of the deformation of the earth's crust caused
by loading and unloading of inland glaciers was given by Peltier ( 2007 ) . Tarasov
and Peltier ( 2002 ) describe the interrelation of subsidence and sediment formation
for the Lagoon of Venice. But, there is still a need for interdisciplinary studies of
the interrelation of crust deformation, climatically driven sea level variations, and
catastrophic events. The chapter presented here contributes to the understanding of
the complex interrelation between geo-system and climate along changing coast-
lines. We deal with the cause and effect relation between climate change, vertical
crustal movement, and the change of the coastlines. We approach the reconstruction
of palaeogeographic scenarios as well as future coastline scenarios coupled with
IPCC sea level projections and empirical data of vertical crustal movements and
gauge measurement of hazardous events.
The need of tools for investigating coastal change processes requires the devel-
opment of models that display cause and effect relation in a changing coastal
environment. Despite that need it has to be stated that modelling results of the
complex interrelation of processes of the earth's crust, sea level change, climate,
and socio-economic development on timescales of millennia are scarce by now.
With the research project SINCOS (Sinking Coasts - Geosphere, Ecosphere, and
Anthroposphere of the Holocene Southern Baltic Sea) funded by the German
Research Foundation (DFG), a pace forward has been done in filling this gap (Harff
and Lüth, 2007 ) . The basis for an interdisciplinary approach in coastline change
modelling is a data management system that allows the integration of data from
quite different scientific sources describing coastal systems from different points
of view. This database system serves as the main prerequisite for an analysis of
an interrelation of variables measured (or received by modelling) from different
disciplines.
Modelling has been carried out in two directions: hindcasting and projective
scenarios on a time span between 5700 years BP and 2100 years AD. While palaeo-
modelling depends on the construction of relative sea level curves, the concept of
projective modelling involves climate scenario data. These data are provided by the
German Climate Research Centre (Voß et al. 1997 ) and Intergovernmental Panel