The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently completed a coastal demographics study of the United States and U.S. territories. As part of this study, FEMA estimated the United States population subject to the 1% annual chance (100 y) coastal flood hazard as mapped by FEMA. This determination followed a three-step process: (1) create a national digital flood hazard database by compiling the best available coastal-proximate, digital flood-hazard-area data using FEMA data sets; (2) develop a systematic method to separate coastal and riverine flood hazard areas and incorporate this boundary into the digital flood hazard database; and (3) combine the year 2000 census data with the digital flood hazard database using a geographic information system. This enabled estimates of the U.S. population subject to the 1% annual chance coastal flood. The analysis was conducted at the census block-group level, with census block-group populations (permanent residents) assumed to be uniformly distributed across each block group. The results demonstrate that approximately 3.0% of the U.S. population lives in areas subject to the 1% annual chance coastal flood hazard. It must be emphasized, however, that these numbers are based on the 1% annual chance (100 y) coastal flood. Historical coastal floods less frequent than the 1% chance annual flood have occurred in the U.S. on numerous occasions. If less-frequent coastal flood events were considered in this study, such as the 0.2% annual chance (500 y) coastal flood or, if seasonal (vacations) population were considered, then a much greater percentage of the U.S. population would be determined as subject to coastal flooding.

The hydrodynamics, salinity circulation, and transport of suspended fine sediment from major rivers on the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) were simulated with the numerical model H3D. Tides, river inflow, wind, and heat exchanges were used to drive the three-dimensional baroclinic model. Tide propagation in the northern Gulf and seasonality in the sediment plume advection from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers into the GOM were well represented in the model. The similarity between the model's results and the sediment plume as seen in MODIS satellite images and the salinity structure as observed in previous studies is demonstrated. This qualitatively valid model is used for initial guidance in design of new Mississippi River (MR) diversions by studying the effects of five conceptual MR diversions on the fate of its suspended fine material. The diversions were positioned halfway between Port Sulphur and Venice, southeast Louisiana. The scenario transporting 70% of the MR to the west and 30% to the east of the delta presents the best configuration in terms of retention of sediment within the continental shelf. This configuration redirects the main sediment and freshwater flow from the river to the nearshore and the upper continental shelf with the least losses to deeper GOM waters. Given the local dominant westward wind regime, increased discharges diverted to the east will increase the amount of sediment that travels west around the MR birdfoot delta and over the Mississippi Canyon, with a higher chance of being lost to deeper waters.

Erosion of a salt marsh at Fort Pulaski National Monument threatens a pier of historical significance along the North Channel of the Savannah River, the main shipping channel for the Port of Savannah, Georgia. The erosion was initiated by the alongshore and onshore migration of a supratidal oyster shell ridge that exposed a marsh scarp that is susceptible to lateral retreat in response to both wind-generated and vessel-generated waves undercutting the upper-marsh surface. An instrumented field study was completed between October 2007 and February 2008 to examine the relative importance of wind-generated and vessel-generated waves to the retreat of the scarp by 0.21 m along the instrumented transect. On average, there were 14 sailings by container ships per day and up to twice as many sailings by pilot boats ferrying the harbor pilots to container ships offshore, but only those vessels that sailed within 1 m of the high-tide water level had waves capable of reaching the scarp. The vessel-generated waves accounted for ~5% of the cumulative wave energy over the study, but because of their larger height and longer period, they accounted for almost 25% of the cumulative wave force. It is the locally generated wind waves that account for most of the wave force acting on the exposed scarp and which are largely responsible for the observed retreat. Waves generated during both frontal and tropical storms tend to be associated with storm tides that maintain water levels at or near the elevation of the scarp for several days. Now that the shell ridge has largely migrated past the site and the areas of greater retreat historically are protected by a wedge of sand, it is argued that an increase in vessel traffic and/or the use of larger, post-Panamax ships will not significantly accelerate the retreat of the marsh.

This work presents monthly budgets for water and salt in the Baltic Sea and its five main subbasins, the Baltic Proper, the Bothnian Sea, the Bothnian Bay, the Gulf of Finland, and the Gulf of Riga. This process-based mass-balance model uses empirical data (from Helsinki Commission [HELCOM]) for the period 1997 to 2005. Previous models of this kind generally have used water-temperature data to differentiate between different water layers. This model (CoastMab) uses sedimentological criteria related to the theoretical wave base to differentiate between the surface-water layer and lower vertical layers. CoastMab stems from a model development in aquatic radioecology, and it has been previously validated for many different substances (radionuclides, metals, nutrients, suspended particulate matter, and salt) in lakes and relatively small coastal areas but not for such a large and complex system of interconnected basins as the Baltic Sea. New morphometric data for the Baltic Sea and the defined subbasins and new hypsographic and volume curves based on digitized bathymetric data are also presented and used in this work. The aim is to present data on the fluxes of water to the system, precipitation, and the theoretical retention times for water and salt in the defined subbasins of the Baltic Sea, since those values provide fundamental information on how the system reacts to changes in, e.g., nutrient loading. The idea with this modeling approach, and the results presented in this work, is that these water fluxes, water retention rates, and the algorithms used to quantify vertical mixing and diffusion among the defined layers should be structured in such a manner that the model also can be used to quantify fluxes of nutrients and toxins. This places certain demands on the structure of the model that may be different from physical oceanographic models, e.g., in quantifying sedimentation, resuspension, mixing, and diffusion, and in the requirements regarding the accessibility of the necessary driving variables.

Integration of impacts of sea-level rise to coastal zone management practices are performed through coastal vulnerability assessments. Out of the types of vulnerability assessments, a proposed model demonstrated that relative vulnerability of different coastal environments to sealevel rise may be quantified using basic information that includes coastal geomorphology, rate of sea-level rise, and past shoreline evolution for the National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise for U.S. Coasts. The proposed methodology focuses on identifying those regions where the various effects of sea-level rise may be the greatest. However, the vulnerability cannot be directly equated with particular physical effects. Thus, using this concept as a starting point, a coastal vulnerability matrix and a coastal vulnerability index that use indicators of impacts of sea-level rise are developed. The developed model compares and ranks different regions according to their vulnerabilities while prioritizing particular impacts of sea-level rise of the region. In addition, the developed model determines most vulnerable parameters for adaptation measures within the integrated coastal zone management concept. Using available regional data, each parameter is assigned a vulnerability rank of very low to very high (1–5) within the developed coastal vulnerability matrix to calculate impact sub-indices and the overall vulnerability index. The developed methodology and Thieler and Hammar-Klose the proposed methodology were applied to the Göksu Delta, Turkey. It is seen that the Göksu Delta shows moderate to high vulnerability to sea-level rise. The outputs of the two models indicate that although both models assign similar levels of vulnerability for the overall region, which is in agreement with common the literature, the results differ significantly when in various parts of the region is concerned. Overall, the proposed Thieler and Hammar-Klose method assigns higher vulnerability ranges than does the developed coastal vulnerability index sea-level rise (CVI-SLR) model. A histogram of physical parameters and human influence parameters enables enable decision makers to determine the controllable values using the developed model.

Didim Peninsula, on the Aegean coast of Turkey, has been experiencing a relatively slow but steady social and ecological transformation since the 1990s. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism declared this area a tourism development region in 2005; thus, major investments and developments are already planned. This may negatively impact the surrounding ecologically important ecosystems in the study area. Understanding and monitoring Didim's development is necessary to guide the ministry in promoting sustainable planning and management, as well as mitigating the adverse effects on the ecosystems. The present work aims to detect land use and cover changes of the Didim Peninsula between 1994 and 2005 by using satellite images and remote sensing and geographic information system technologies. Orthorectified Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (2005) and Spot 2X (1994) images are used in the object-oriented classification. The main analytical procedures include image preprocessing, image classification, accuracy assessment, postclassification change detection, and normalized difference vegetation index analyses. Results show three distinct processes taking place in the study area: expansion of artificial surfaces and arable lands; ongoing succession of the vegetation cover, mainly in the central and southwest areas; and transformation from a dense and vigorous vegetation cover to a less dense and sometimes discontinuous vegetation cover, mainly in the east and northeast. Identified trends may have significant consequences in terms of the response that ecosystems give to these changes. A strategy to promote sustainable land use management should be generated timely manner.

Because sandy beaches are often totally devoid of primary producers, food webs based on autochthonous production are very rare. The accumulation of wrack along the shorelines has been shown to allow spatially subsidised food webs in these environments. A method for quantifying and describing the spatial distribution of beach-cast macrophyte material was developed based on line transects set up perpendicular to the shore. The method combined rapid visual techniques with measurements of detritus patch area, patch thickness, and patch distance from the shore. Average agreement between field observations and measurements was good: R² = 0.93, p < 0.05, N = 53, with R² ranging from 0.65 to 0.98. The method was used to quantify beach-cast Cymodocea nodosa leaf litter (dry weight, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) along the 29 km shoreline of a semienclosed estuarine bay that is part of the delta arrow of an estuarine system (Alfacs Bay, Ebro River delta, Tarragona, Spain). The total amount of beach-cast leaf detritus varied from 0.07 to 3.02 kg dry wt m⁻¹ of shoreline. The largest amounts of detritus accumulated on gentle slopes exposed to the dominant winds in the area. Total beach-cast leaf litter stocks in the bay amounted to 22.1 t dry wt, 7.1 t of carbon, 0.54 t of nitrogen, and 0.013 t of phosphorus. Export rates to the beach were estimated at 55.5 to 97.3 t y⁻¹, which represented 4.1% to 7.4% of the C. nodosa leaf production in the bay and 5.8% to 10.3% of the total meadow leaf export.

Barrier islands in sheltered settings are rare coastal geomorphic features. Here we present a case study of controls on the evolution of Tapora Island, North Island, New Zealand. Tapora Island is an active barrier island located opposite the entrance to the Kaipara Harbour on a high-energy coast. Subsurface facies form an aggradational barrier island succession from subtidal to subaerial elevations. This facies succession, combined with surface samples and geomorphic and geologic relationships, indicates that Tapora Island is the most recent barrier island at this location in the estuary and forms part of a prograded coast opposite the entrance. Wave data indicate that ocean swell waves penetrate the inlet for approximately 2 hours either side of high tide and are capable of transporting sand onto the island. The combined effects of swell waves, abundant sediment supply, and exposed aspect are the critical factors that have formed the barrier island. Despite the “sheltered’ estuarine setting, Tapora Island has formed under conditions that are more akin to open ocean coasts. The origin and development of Tapora Island broadly conforms to the accumulating barrier island model.

The physical characteristics of sediments were measured from transects in the Minho, Lima, Cávado, and Ave estuaries in the northern part of Portugal. The variables investigated were: chemical composition, particle size, water content, salinity, temperature, and pH. In a miniflume used to measure erodibility, erosion tests were filmed with a high speed camera and the rheological characteristics of overlaying fluid layer were measured using a rheometer. Because the physical sediment characteristics are related to its erosion, the physical characterization and the erodability were correlated. The influence of the season and sampling site on the sediment properties were assessed for the Cávado estuary.

Large differences were found in the physical characterization between the four estuaries, namely in particle size, water content, and chemical composition, and these were important in determining the stability of sediments. Short-term changes in weather conditions prior to sampling and site-to-site variability were found to have more significant effects on the sediment physical properties than seasonal changes.

The southern edge of San Francisco Bay is surrounded by former salt evaporation ponds, where tidal flow has been restricted since the mid to late 1890s. These ponds are now the focus of a large wetland restoration project, and accurate measurement of current pond bathymetry and adjacent mud flats has been critical to restoration planning. Aerial light detection and ranging (lidar) has become a tool for mapping surface elevations, but its accuracy had rarely been assessed for wetland habitats. We used a singlebeam echosounder system we developed for surveying shallow wetlands to map submerged pond bathymetry in January of 2004 and compared those results with aerial lidar surveys in two ponds that were dry in May of 2004. From those data sets, we compared elevations for 5164 (Pond E9, 154 ha) and 2628 (Pond E14, 69 ha) echosounder and lidar points within a 0.375-m radius of each other (0.750-m diameter lidar spot size). We found that mean elevations of the lidar points were lower than the echosounder results by 5 ± 0.1 cm in Pond E9 and 2 ± 0.2 cm in Pond E14. Only a few points (5% in Pond E9, 2% in Pond E14) differed by more than 20 cm, and some of these values may be explained by residual water in the ponds during the lidar survey or elevation changes that occurred between surveys. Our results suggest that aerial lidar may be a very accurate and rapid way to assess terrain elevations for wetland restoration projects.

San Jose Gulf is a small semienclosed bay connected by a narrow mouth to a much larger basin, the San Matias Gulf. Intriguingly, this comparatively small water body, characterized by high biological productivity, has contributed most of the historical shellfish production in the region.

A remote sensing approach allowed us to advance a composite conjecture aimed at explaining that phenomenon. A combination of circulation, strong tidal currents, and coastal topography leads to the formation of a frontal system inside San Jose Gulf and to the development of turbulent fluxes that drive the hydrographic regime. The front divides the San Jose Gulf in two domains (west and east). The origin of water flowing into the west domain was tracked to the Valdes Frontal System, on the continental shelf. The west domain is highly turbulent due to the formation of vortexes and dipoles during the tidal cycle. Detachable dipoles formed at the edge of jets outflowing from San Jose Gulf can reach the central part of San Matias Gulf, constituting a possible larval transport mechanism between the two gulfs. Our results led us to postulate that (1) nutrients from the continental shelf are “trapped in” and larvae are retained in the east domain of San Jose Gulf, resulting in persistently high biomass of secondary producers, and (2) asymmetrical exchange, in the form of vorticial flows, “pumps out” waterborne material from the San Jose Gulf into San Matias Gulf, affecting the connectivity between the two basins.

Waves and currents were monitored over a range of incident forcing between March 23 and April 24, 2003, on Roberts Bank, the sandy intertidal portion of the Fraser River Delta. A comparison of the dimensionless, current-induced skin friction with the critical skin friction for the initiation of sediment motion suggests that the currents are only capable of entraining sediment briefly with the ebbing tide or when enhanced by the wind. Since these wind-generated currents are associated with storm waves, which typically exceed the critical skin friction, they have a disproportionately large impact on the direction of the sediment transport. An energetics-based model, driven by locally measured near-bottom currents, is used to characterize the rate and direction of bedload and suspended load transport. The largest transport rates were predicted in response to storm waves and were initially directed onshore with weak oscillatory transport and alongshore by wind-generated currents that turned offshore as the ebbing currents strengthened. The integrated transport (over the duration of the study) was predicted to be weakly offshore, but this is ascribed to the coincidental occurrence of storm activity with the ebbing tide. It is argued that if storm waves were equally distributed between the flood and ebb phases of the tide, the wind-generated currents and oscillatory transport would lead to a partly onshore-directed net transport during storms, which may in turn lead to tidal flat accretion. This suggests that sand flats are morphodynamically different than mudflats and open beaches, although further study is required to ascertain the link between the small-scale observations of this study and the larger-scale transport pathways that are ultimately responsible for tidal flat morphology.

Spatial trends in the shape of profiles of South San Francisco Bay (SSFB) tidal flats are examined using bathymetric and lidar data collected in 2004 and 2005. Eigenfunction analysis reveals a dominant mode of morphologic variability related to the degree of convexity or concavity in the cross-shore profile—indicative of (i) depositional, tidally dominant or (ii) erosional, wave impacted conditions. Two contrasting areas of characteristic shape—north or south of a constriction in estuary width located near the Dumbarton Bridge—are recognized. This pattern of increasing or decreasing convexity in the inner or outer estuary is correlated to spatial variability in external and internal environmental parameters, and observational results are found to be largely consistent with theoretical expectations. Tidal flat convexity in SSFB is observed to increase (in decreasing order of significance) in response to increased deposition, increased tidal range, decreased fetch length, decreased sediment grain size, and decreased tidal flat width.

We investigated the origin and absolute age of beachrock samples on Bozcaada Island, located on the northern Aegean Sea coast of Turkey, using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Various types of cements were identified, such as micritic, meniscus, and biologic cements, revealing that the beachrock could have occurred as a result of the combined effects of marine-phreatic and supratidal cementation conditions. Optical dating results showed that the formation of beachrock ranged in age from 5.41 ± 0.58 ka BP to 0.33 ± 0.05 ka BP. However, much of the beachrock body (about 3 m in thickness) is drowned or submerged today, suggesting that submerged beachrocks extending to −5 m date to earlier times than the start of the cementation period discussed herein.

Belgium has been interested in and involved in Antarctic studies for over a century. The name of Adrien de Gerlache is indelibly linked with that of his ship, the Belgica, the first vessel to ever spend a winter trapped in the ice of the southern continent. The former Norwegian sealer-whaler had a multinational crew of scientists and sailors. If it brought back a trove of information, it also did a tale of hardships and fears. The postal administration of Belgium—and to a more modest extent that of Romania and Poland—have illustrated the expedition, its anniversaries, and the further research carried out by Belgians in Antarctica. The Belgica was sunk by the German invasion forces in World War II. Efforts are underway to refloat the vessel and make it into a museum, as was done, e.g., for the Fram.

The Greek and Roman coastal sites of Sybaris, Thuri, and Copia in Calabria, Italy, active from ∼727 BC to about the third century AD, were buried by Crati Delta sediments and are now positioned inland ∼2.5 km west of the present Gulf of Taranto coast. This study identifies biogenic components in two sediment cores of mid-Holocene to the present age, recovered in the Casa Bianca sector of the Sybaris archaeological park. Three biofacies are identified using primarily molluscs, along with associated faunas and vegetal components. The lower biofacies (older than 3600 BC to ∼2700 BC, Neolithic), with moderate to well-represented faunas, indicates an open marine inner shelf environment. A midcore transitional biofacies (from ∼2700 to ∼2000 BC, late Neolithic), with meagre faunas and poorly preserved specimens, mixed with plant matter, was deposited in very high energy conditions close to shore. The upper biofacies (from ∼2000 BC, early Bronze age to present) comprises even less fauna, mostly terrestrial, and was increasingly influenced by fluviodeltaic conditions; it includes the strata with Greek and Roman artefacts. The up-core sequence records evolution from marine to coastal, wetland, and then terrestrial environments, associated with active progradation seaward of the Crati Delta's coastal margin through time. This ecobiostratigraphic approach can assist archaeologists studying this region by identifying faunas that serve to interpret paleogeographic conditions that prevailed before, during, and after occupation of the three sites.