Seminar: Andrew Ashton, WHOI

“Climate Change, Coastal Change: Shoreline shaping by waves and coastal landform response to sea-level rise” Coastal change represents a long-term climate change hazard as coastal residents and communities often respond to short-term disasters, typically storm inundation and associated shoreline erosion, by rebuilding and investing in increased shoreline protection. The shoreline and its associated coastal landforms, however, develop from the accumulation of changes beyond the short-term back-and-forth of seasonal and storm/storm recovery oscillations. Looking towards the future decades and centuries, quantitative, process-based models will become increasingly necessary to project how coastal sedimentary systems will respond to historically unprecedented sea-level rise rates, wave climate changes, and human alteration. My presentation will address two components of long-term coastal change. First, wave-driven alongshore transport acts as a dominant process sculpting the shoreline, making shorelines smooth and controlling the growth of dynamic landforms such as spits and capes. Second, low-lying coasts face a future of historically unprecedented rates of sea-level rise. The potential future of coastal barriers and reef islands will be investigated using different modeling approaches.