Hurricane Idalia shows nature may provide the best shoreline protection – NPR
When Hurricane Idalia slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast in August (2023), one of the hardest hit areas was Cedar Key. A nearly 7-foot storm surge battered the small fishing community…(NOAA) says Idalia caused an estimated $3.6 billion in damage…But on Cedar Key, when the water receded, scientists found some good news amid all the damage. Nature-based “living shoreline” projects built to protect roads, buildings and other structures were relatively undamaged…
The Marshall Islands Aren’t Giving In to Sea Level Rise – Hakai Magazine
The precariously placed island nation has put together a comprehensive—if expensive—plan to survive sea level rise…
Can the ‘sand motor’ save West Africa’s eroding coast? – Grist Magazine
As sea levels rise, engineers are using massive Dutch-inspired sand sculptures to protect shorefront settlements…It’s called the “sand motor,” and it comes from the Netherlands, a low-lying nation with centuries of experience in coastal protection…
The World’s Fastest-Sinking Megacity Has One Last Chance to Save Itself – Bloomberg
Venice is sinking. So are Rotterdam, Bangkok and New York. But no place compares to Jakarta, the fastest-sinking megacity on the planet. Over the past 25 years, the hardest-hit areas of Indonesia’s capital have subsided more than 16 feet. The city has until 2030 to figure out a solution, experts say, or it will be too late to hold back the Java Sea…
Inside the Marshall Islands’ life-or-death plan to survive climate change – Grist Magazine
The Pacific island nation is seeking $35 billion to protect against sea-level rise and prevent a mass exodus…“We call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really our survival plan,” said John Silk, the foreign minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands…
These Haunting Underwater Photos Portray Climate Change in a New Way – CNN Interactive
Akessa stares strait ahead with a look of fierce indignation. The 15-year-old is sitting in a rickety chair. Her hand are clasped in her lap. Her white skirt is billowing ever so slightly in what, at first glance, you might assume is the wind….There is no breeze blowing here. This girl and her searing gaze are underwater…
Is this ‘age of the delta’ coming to an end? – Knowable Magazine
The land near the mouth of the Mississippi River is barely land at all. Muddy water forks into a labyrinth of pathways through a seemingly endless expanse of electric-green marsh grass, below skies thick with birds. Shrimp and crabs wriggle in the water below, and oak and cypress sprout from wet soils on higher grounds. Stretching for more than a hundred miles along the coast of Louisiana, this is one of the world’s largest, and most famous, river deltas…
Slipping away: Erosion forces Olympic National Park to take a hard look at Kalaloch Lodge – the Seattle Times
Kalaloch is the third-most-visited of Olympic National Park’s nine districts…Kalaloch Lodge, run on a concessionaire’s contract by the global entertainment/hospitality company Delaware North…has grown into a beachfront hotel with a restaurant overlooking the ocean, a small grocery store, a campground and nearly 50 cabins sitting on the same bluffs where the Beckers built their rustic resort 95 years ago. Except there’s less bluff. And less of it every year….
Venice Isn’t Alone: 7 Sinking Cities Around the World – How Stuff Works
Many big cities sit near the ocean. They became cities in the first place because their ports facilitated trade and travel by sea.
Coastal cities all over the world are sinking — a geological process called subsidence — and it’s happening at a rate that makes scientists nervous. If these bits of land didn’t have important cities on them, it’s likely nobody would notice, or, in some cases, that they wouldn’t be sinking at all…