Abstract
Southeast Asian coastal environments are undergoing massive transformations with unprecedented population and infrastructure development. These transformations are occurring on a backdrop of intense natural and anthropogenic environmental change, which are increasing the risk to the burgeoning coastal population. Little is known about how central Vietnamese coastal environments have changed naturally since the mid-Holocene sea-level highstand and how recent anthropogenic change and sea-level variation have affected the coastal system. The Chan May embayment in central Vietnam allows us to examine how recent changes in both anthropogenic development and sea-level change have affected the coastline. The embayment preserves a series of prograding beach ridges and is subject to intense human pressures with the construction of a large economic and industrial park, and expansion of tourist facilities. Using ground penetrating radar and quartz optical dating we identify a switch from 6000 years of prograding beach ridges to transgressive dunes within the past century resulting in a decreasing rate of beach ridge progradation possibly in the last 100 years. The recent modes of sediment deposition through washovers and a transgressive dune indicates that coastal progradation has slowed and might have stopped.