Retreat from a Rising Sea by Orrin H. Pilkey

Author:Orrin H. Pilkey
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: POL044000, Political Science/Public Policy/Environmental Policy, SCI092000, Science/Global Warming & Climate Change
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

Recently the Army Corps of Engineers declared that Fire Island, New York, had been “damaged” by Hurricane Sandy, a clear misunderstanding of barrier-island evolution processes.

Some islands are narrow and low, such as most of those on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Pakistan, the Mississippi and Mekong deltas, and the Arctic islands of Siberia, the United States, and Canada. Often a reach of barrier-island coast is a mix of both narrow and wide islands. The narrow islands are more likely to be overwashed in storms and often are in the actual process of island migration. Not so for the wide islands, many of which are thinning by erosion on both sides. The human retreat already has begun on the Outer Banks of North Carolina (although it is not yet called “retreat”), as dozens of small buildings have fallen in during the last two decades and have not been replaced.

Buildings on wide and high islands such as the Sea Islands of Georgia and some of the Frisian islands of the Netherlands and Germany are likely to survive longer without relocation than are those on the narrow islands. But beachfront buildings, whether on low and narrow or high and wide barriers, are at very high risk.

As sea-level rise threatens more communities, even replenished beaches will eventually become a memory, except for those in a few wealthy island communities that can afford them. But with time, these replenished beaches will rapidly become unstable, and their lifespan will become shorter. This is because the equilibrium shoreline is somewhere behind the held-in-place beach that is now not located where nature wants it to be. Simultaneously, as more resources are required to maintain a beach, cities will have to absorb much of the funding for the response to sea-level rise. It is likely that cities will trump barrier-island communities for federal dollars.

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