ON FRACTAL MECHANISM OF COASTLINE -A Case Study of China

摘要

MANDELBROT enunciated the uncertainty of the length of a coastline in his paper" How long is the coastline of Britain?" published in " Science" in 1967. The fractal concept was presented for the first time in that paper and has been applied to many fields ever since. According to the fractal theory and conditions of fractal research of coastline, the controls of faults and biologic function on the fractal character of coastline are preliminarily discussed on the basis of GIS in this paper . Finally, some significant conclusions are drawn: 1) the faults control the basic trends of coastlines of two study areas;2) the fractal dimension of coastline of Taiwan is smaller than that of Changle- Lufeng, because the faults of Taiwan more intensely control the trend and fractal dimension of the coastline;3) the larger the fractal dimension of the faults or the major faults, the more the controlling effect of them on the trend and fractal dimension of coastline; 4) the larger fractal dimension of the coastline of Changle- Lufeng indicates that the biologic function intensely shapes the coastline. In a word, the controls of faults and biologic function on the fractal character of coastline are discussed with a case study of China in this paper, it can be seen that faults and biologic function both have influence over the trend and fractal dimension of coastline, the fractal mechanism of coastline of two study areas may be so.