Ali Karami Khaniki - Assistant proffessor and head, Dept. of Coastal Protection, Soil Conservation And Watershed Management Institue, P.O.Box ۱۳۴۴۵-۱۱۳۶, Tehran, Iran
Hamidreza Masoumi - Dept. of Coastal Protection, Soil Conservation And Watershed Management Institue

The first step for protection and sustainable development of coastal areas is identifying all natural characteristics and classifying them. Collecting this information provides suitable tools for better management of coastal zones, resulting less expensive coastal projects and preventing waste of projects budget. Unfortunately there is not enough information about classification of the coastal areas of our country. Among the long coastlines of Iran (longer than 3000 Kilometers), the coastlines of Sistan & Baloochestan province are less identified and classified. This paper presents the results of a comprehensive work done for classification of Sistan & Baluchestan coastal zones with Shepard method. This investigation was done by field observation and GIS studies based on satellite images. For GIS studies, the software ILWIS was employed. As the result of this study, a series of maps for Cowardin classification and related tables containing the areas of each class were presented.

Georeference, GIS, Coastal Classification, Cowardin, Rs, Shorelines