Abstract: Coastline changes are of great significance in studying ecological environment changes in coastal zones and even all over the globe. Through human-computer interactive interpretation for the TM images of 5 time phases, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010, we acquired the information about southern China continental coastline, and analyzed the features and reasons of the coastline changes. The results show that: (1) The length and fractal dimension of southern China continental coastline remain relatively stable, but there exists the evolutionary trend of overall shortening and partly lengthening of the coastline; (2) The coastline advances seaward in main parts of the coast and backs landward only in a few parts of the coast; (3) Analyses on two typical coasts, Changjiang River estuary-south bank of Hangzhou Bay and the Pearl River Delta show that the rate and intensity of spatial-temporal changes in southern China continental coastline are continuing to strengthen; (4) In the period from 1990 to 2010, the spatial-temporal changes in southern China continental coastline caused by the human factors are more significant than thoses caused by the natural factors, resulting in the increasing of the proportion of artificial coastline, and declining of the proportion of natural coastline.

Key words: continental coastline, spatial-temporal changes, Changjiang River estuary, south bank of Hangzhou Bay, Pearl River Delta