Coastal landscapes management  <B>Coastal landscapes management</B><P>T.A. Glushko</B><I><P> Water Problems Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 10 Novaya Basmannaya, Moscow, Russia</I><P> Abstract<P> Coastal management and coastal protection would be successful if they are based on an understanding of the natural laws and processes of coastal landscapes or geosystems. One of the most important characteristics of geosystems is their stability: ability to resist to external influences or period of return to initial state of geosystems after influence. Critical parameters and ways to quantitative assessment of geosystems stability are discussed. Coastal management and coastal protection would be successful if they are based on an understanding of the natural laws and processes of coastal landscapes. This is the reason for a comprehensive study of the processes of formation of coastal geosystems, their structure, dynamics and function. The landscape is a natural system of homogenous genesis, with close vertical links between its components and with lateral links between different geosystems which are included in the landscape as elementary naturalterritorial complexes. Each elementary geosystem has the same type of geological basis, ground water, soil, vegetation and micro climate. The interaction between these components is stronger than the horizontal processes in the geosystem. Based on their hypsometric level, surface morphology and redistribution of substance between elementary geosystems they are divided by B.B. Polynov (1952) into autonomous ones (located on watersheds with deep ground water where the substance comes through the atmosphere), superaqueous ones (above water, with shallow ground water and accumulation of matter from autonomous geosystems) and subaqueous ones (under water, with income of substance as sediment carried by water flow). The landscape usually is subjected to several transitional flows such as rivers, aeolian transport of sediments, migration flows of animals and transit of air masses that play a specific role in the formation and functioning of the landscape. Thus, fresh river flow brings into the sea biogenic elements feeding plankton, and sediments supplying long shore drift and consequently beaches and other coastal features. But river flow also brings many pollutants into coastal waters. Aeolian transport of sediments is of great importance, because it moves sand from the land into the sea and along the shore line, participating in the building of the beaches. For example, in South Africa headlandbypass dune fields, as defined by Tinley (Dunes'94, 1994), were observed in the form of transgressive corridors of transverse dunes which crossed lowrelief headlands, transporting sand from an upwind sandy beach into the downwind bay. Over the past 50 years most of these active dunes have been stabilized without due cognizance of the role that the dunes play in the coastal sediment transport system, resulting in beach erosion in downtransport areas ( McLachlan et al., in press).<P>