Jiangsu has the most abundant tidal flat resources among China＇s coastal provinces. To ease the conflict between the growing population and shrinking usable land and to promote regional sustainable development, large-scale coastal reclamation development activities have been performed in Jiangsu Province since 1949. The present study has integrated multi-source remote sensing images during 1974 to 2012 by using a Multi-point Fast Marching Method （MFMM） to extract the Jiangsu coastal reclamation areas for different time periods. The temporal and spatial patterns of the extent and elevation of the reclamation areas were analysed in order to determine the unused potential for future reclamation. It will provide information necessary to support the development and construction of tidal flats in Jiangsu. Results show that： （1） the reclaimed tidal fiats along the Jiangsu coast cover more than 19.86×10^4 hm^2, of which 13.97×10^4 hm^2 is located in Yancheng, 4.84×10^4 hm^2 in Nantong, and 1.05×10^4 hm^2 in Lianyungang; （2） the average elevation of the reclaimed Jiangsu tidal flats has gradually decreased over the last 40 years, while those in Dongtai and Rudong have showed particularly accelerated decrease since the 1990s; and （3） in 2012, very few unused tidal flats two meters above the sea level are left along the Jiangsu coast, and mainly concentrated in Yancheng. As there are still reserving some coastal land resources between 0-2 m, providing us with a potential for future development. All of these findings may be useful for researchers and local authorities for the development and utilization of tidal flat resources in Jiangsu.
The morphological characteristics of small-scale bedforms were measured by means of an acoustic profiling sonar on the Dafeng tidal flat, Jiangsu, in 2009, and in the Jiulong Estuary, Xiamen, in 2010, respectively. The ＂multi-threshold value＂ method was utilized to reveal the morphological undulations along which bedforms were present. Analyses of the datasets obtained show that： （1） sand ripples can have irregular shapes, and （2） changes in bedform morphology are small within a single tidal cycle but may be significant over several tidal cycles. Fractal and variogram analyses of the seabed roughness revealed the existence of a significant relationship between current speed and the fractal dimension of the seabed roughness. As current speed increases, seabed roughness increases with a trend of smaller-scale bottom structures being replaced by larger-scale structures. Furthermore, the surface of the larger-scale bottom structures can either become smooth due to the absence of smaller-scale features or become rougher due to the presence of superimposed smaller-scale structures.
