Coastal Zone Management

Global Perspectives, Regional Processes, Local Issues

Mu Ramkumar, Arthur James, David Menier, Kumaraswamy K, Mu Ramkumar, Arthur James, David Menier, Kumaraswamy K

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780128143513
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Geofísica

Coastal Zone Management: Global Perspectives, Regional Processes, Local Issues brings together a vast range of interdisciplinary data on coastal zones in a concise, yet exhaustive format that will be useful to students, researchers, and teachers. The book contains several focused sections, all of which include individual chapters written by subject experts with considerable experience in their fields of research. Each chapter presents the latest research and status of its focus, with a concluding endnote on future trends. Topics covered in the book include the sea level and climate changes, evolution of coastlines, land-use dynamics and coastal hazards mitigation and management.

The global coast has faced the force of both climate hange and natural disasters, which continue to result in the loss of human life and degradation of quality of the coastal environment. Coastal Zone Management: Global Perspectives, Regional Processes, Local Issues provides the latest developments and key strategies to tackle this in a single comprehensive volume. It is an essential reference for scientists and researchers well-read on coastal zones, as well as those new to the subject.

• Presents a unique compilation of contributed chapters, including a focus on methodology, case studies, stategy, and policy, acting as a one-source reference for students, teachers, researchers and administrators.
• Discusses challenges at local levels in order to help interpret regional processes that have global ramifications.
• Provides a database for scientists working on research topics related to coastal zone management.

Chapter 1

Coastal Zone Management During Changing Climate and Rising Sea Level: Transcendence of Institutional, Geographic, and Subject Field Barriers Is the Key

Mu. Ramkumar*; David Menier^†; K. Kumaraswamy^{‡ ⁎} Department of Geology, Periyar University, Salem, India
^† Géosciences Océan Laboratory UMR CNRS 6538, University of South Brittany, Vannes Cedex, France
^‡ Department of Geography, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, India

Abstract

Sprawling between the high-tide water mark and up to 200 m isobath, and accounting for about 18% of Earth's surface and 25% of primary global productivity, coastal zones are environmentally sensitive ecological niches. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the coastal zone is being overexploited and undermanaged, and needs systematic remediation and nourishment programs for sustenance. Also, not to be overlooked is the fact that managing coastal zones is in any nation's interest. The coastal zone is not a geographic boundary between the land and the sea, but a global compartment of special significance for biogeochemical cycling and processes. This zone is under the influence of ever-changing sea levels, waves, tides, currents, and so forth. In addition, it is inherently susceptible to litho, hydro, bio, and atmospheric dynamics. While each of these spheres has unique spatial and temporal scales of operation, their combined effects are realized in/along the coastal zone. This complexity poses difficulties in managing coastal regions for sustainable development. Despite the availability of sophisticated analytical instrumentation, and recognition of reliable proxies and integration systems of a variety of data sets to monitor, assess, and manage the coastal zone, efficient management plans are yet to be developed. Although land/water links have been long known, conventional scientific and administrative structures have tended to keep the sectors apart. It requires a transgression of ideas between subject barriers and transcendence of sea level and coastal zone management research on a spatial and temporal scale for designing and implementing effective management strategies. In addition to institutionalizing management plans, it is necessary to establish synergy between local-regional-global efforts of coastal management programs. The current research, management plans, and strategies need to be reoriented, recognizing the transcendence of physical, institutional, subject, and stakeholder boundaries.

Keywords

Coastal zone management; Spatial-temporal scale; Sea level; Climate; Stakeholder

Acknowledgments

The review was made possible by the decades of work conducted by those authors whose papers are cited in this chapter. We thank those authors in the list and many others whose work influenced our thoughts and conceptualization.

1 Introduction

Sprawling between the high-tide water mark toward land, and up to 200 m isobaths toward the ocean, and accounting for about 18% of Earth's surface and 25% of primary global productivity, coastal zones are environmentally sensitive ecological niches. These zones constitute a mere 5% of the total landmass, but sustain three-quarters of the world's population (among which almost half is urban!) and yield more than half of the global gross domestic product (Vorosmarty et al., 2009). Costanza et al. (1997) estimated the potential economic value of transitional coastal zones to be more than USD 22,000 ha^{− 1} yaer^{− 1}. Notwithstanding this productivity and proliferation, about 4.6% of the world population is living under the threat of potential loss of about 9.3% of the global gross domestic product (Hinkel et al., 2014) by coastal flooding due to the rising sea level. These simple statistics exemplify the importance and perils of coastal zones. The stakes are rising as the population growth and economic pressure in the coastal zones continue to increase (Brommer and Bochev-van der Burgh, 2009).

Coastal regions and populations are exposed to pressures and hazards from both land and sea, making the coastal zones the most transformed and imperilled social-ecological systems on Earth, characterized by pervasive, unsustainable practices (Cummins et al., 2014). In addition, these zones are under the influence of ever-changing sea levels, waves, tides, and currents; in addition to their inherent susceptibility to the dynamics of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere, making them complex systems. This complexity poses difficulty in managing coastal regions for sustainable development. The stakes are higher because of the dense population of infrastructure, industry, and human settlements along the coasts (Douvere, 2008; Diedrich et al., 2010). In this regard, “sustainability” of management practice, that is, a balanced approach to the management (sensuMcKenna et al., 2008) of social, economic, and environmental issues concerned with coastal zones becomes tenuous, and demands a diverse approach, suitable for tackling local issues, and operating under the regional processes of litho, hydro, bio, and atmospheric interactions. The approach also needs to be constrained under the global-scale changing climate, including rising sea levels, which are increasing anthropogenic pressure and resultant feedback of coastal zones. In short, it necessitates sustainable management of the region. Cicin-Sain and Belfiore (2005) defined the sustainable management of coastal zones as “a dynamic process for the sustainable management and use of coastal zones, taking into account, at the same time, the fragility of coastal ecosystems and landscapes, the diversity of activities and uses, their interactions, the maritime orientation of certain activities and uses, and their impact on both the marine and land part.” This definition provides for integrated coastal management as a continuous and dynamic process by which decisions are made for the sustainable use, development, and protection of coastal zones. The process involves collaboration and co-ordination of different sectors of society, including researchers, governmental and non-governmental bodies, users, and inhabitants (Foucat, 2002).

Recognizing these diverse needs for sustainable management, a wide range of studies are being conducted on documenting, characterizing, and predicting the occurrences and patterns of litho, hydro, bio, and atmospheric processes, and the resultant responses of coastal zones, at various spatial and temporal scales. In this chapter, we demonstrate how coastal zone management strategies transcend the spatial and temporal scales and why integrated management should be implemented for sustenance.

2 Transcendence of Local Issues to a Global Scale Through Regional Processes

2.1 Spatial-Temporal Scale of Cause-Effect

According to Brommer and Bochev-van der Burgh (2009), in light of projected global climate change (IPCC, 2007), it is of paramount importance to understand the long-term (decades to centuries) and large-scale (10–10² km²) evolution of coastal zones for sustainable coastal management and related coastal impact assessments. Within these sustainable visions, shoreline management plans should be developed targeting the determination of future coastal defence policies and strategic long-term planning for shoreline evolution. Forecasts of coastal changes and quantitative risk assessments spanning this time interval are key requirements. However, present coastal research still mainly focuses on forecasting coastal system evolution in response to changes in hydrodynamic processes and sea level on rather small temporal scales, for example, the tidal cycle. The overall trend or direction the system evolves to on longer temporal scales can greatly affect and alter the impact of smaller-scale processes; but still, little is known on how to account for changes in long-term system evolution (Brommer and Bochev-van der Burgh, 2009).

Cowell et al. (2003) presented the spatial and temporal scales of coastal processes into observable landforms (Fig. 1) and interpreted them into exogenic and endogenic processes. As shown in Fig. 1, the processes operate and the products result from a variety of spatial and temporal scales. From these, it can be surmised that the coastal zone management practices, applicable to a geographic location for a time-duration, may not be applicable and or effective for other settings and timeframes. Hence, understanding the spatial and temporal scales of processes that are in operation in a setting, followed by designing and implementing management strategies, could be the key for success. Through a review, Mumby and Harborne (1999) demonstrated a case in this regard. These authors detailed the problems of usage of nonstandard scales in defining habitats, and presented a list of challenges and pitfalls of coastal zone management. They also elaborated on how nonsystematic classification of habitats and ambiguous documentation creates problems on several scales. First, meaningful interpretation of the habitat classification scheme may be difficult on the scale of individual habitat maps. This difficulty applies to managers using the scheme for planning, and field surveyors attempting to adopt it in situ. Second, integrating several habitat maps on, say, a national scale is difficult because there is little or no standardization in terms. Thus, not only it is difficult to decide when two terms are synonymous, but the lack of quantitative detail also obscures actual differences in habitat types, thereby decreasing the probability that habitats will be distinguished corr...