Engineered Sediment Management, Coastal Communities and Sea Level Rise
Webinar
This webinar is part of the Coastal Adaptation Webinar Series.
Dr. Robert S. Young presented the startling insights from a program tracking beach nourishment episodes in the USA – showing that in some places engineered sediment fluxes exceed natural processes. He presented his reflections on how the current approach is transforming large parts of the coast into artificially constructed shorelines, and the increasing urgency of considering natural processes, environmental impacts and long-term sea level rise in policy responses to coastal resilience issues.
Increasingly, the primary tool being used along the oceanfront to “repair” storm-damaged beaches and to adapt to rising sea level is the addition of sand to the coastal system in the form of engineered beaches and dunes (commonly referred to as beach nourishment or beach replenishment). The Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines has built a comprehensive database of all beach dredge and fill projects in the USA, tracking a history back to 1923 with continual updates. The projects in the database represent the movement of over 950 million cubic meters of sand covering over 3700 km of shoreline at a cost of over $9 billion USD, mostly to hold beaches in place in front of coastal infrastructure. This massive program of shoreline stabilization is being carried out with little long-term vision or planning, and no consideration for the cumulative environmental impacts of the mining and placement of so much sand. Long-term environmental impacts are largely ignored and the coastlines are being transformed into artificial constructs, with little consideration of natural processes and long-term sea level rise.
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