Assessing Beach and Dune Erosion and Vulnerability Under Sea Level Rise: A Case Study in the Mediterranean Sea

In this study, we estimate the shoreline retreat, the vulnerability and the erosion rates of an open beach-dune system under projected sea level rise (SLR) and the action of wind-waves (separately and in combination). The methodology is based on the combination of two state-of-the-art numerical models (XBeach and Q2D-morfo) applied in a probabilistic framework and it is implemented in an open sandy beach in Menorca Island (Western Mediterranean). We compute the shoreline response to SLR during the 21st century and we assess the changing impacts of storm waves on the aerial beach-dune system. Results demonstrate the relevant role that the beach backshore features, such as the berm, play as coastal defense, reducing the shoreline retreat and dune vulnerability rates in the near-term (a few decades ahead) and highlighting the importance of simulating the beach morphodynamic processes in coastal impacts assessments. Our findings point at SLR as the major driver of the projected impacts over the beach-dune system, leading to an increase of ∼25% of the volume eroded due to storm waves by the end of the century with respect to present-day conditions

Tracking the spatial footprints of extreme storm surges around the coastline of the UK and Ireland

Storm surges are the most important driver of flooding in many coastal areas. Understanding the spatial extent of storm surge events has important financial and practical implications for flood risk management, reinsurance, infrastructure reliability and emergency response. In this paper, we apply a new tracking algorithm to a high-resolution surge hindcast (CODEC, 1980–2017) to characterize the spatial dependence and temporal evolution of extreme surge events along the coastline of the UK and Ireland. We quantify the severity of each spatial event based on its footprint extremity to select and rank the collection of events. Several surge footprint types are obtained based on the most impacted coastal stretch from each particular event, and these are linked to the driving storm tracks. Using the collection of the extreme surge events, we assess the spatial distribution and interannual variability of the duration, size, severity, and type. We find that the northeast coastline is most impacted by the longest and largest storm surge events, while the English Channel experiences the shortest and smallest storm surge events. The interannual variability indicates that the winter seasons of 1989-90 and 2013–14 were the most serious in terms of the number of events and their severity, based on the return period along the affected coastlines. The most extreme surge event and the highest number of events occurred in the winter season 1989–90, while the proportion of events with larger severities was higher during the winter season 2013–14. This new spatial analysis approach of surge extremes allows us to distinguish several categories of spatial footprints of events around the UK/Ireland coast and link these to distinct storm tracks. The spatial dependence structures detected can improve multivariate statistical methods which are crucial inputs to coastal flooding assessments

MAREJADAS RURALES Y LUCHAS POR LA VIDA, VOL. II: CONFLICTOS SOCIOTERRITORIALES Y POR RECURSOS NATURALES

Volumen 2. Conflictos socioterritoriales y por recursos naturales, coordinado por: Rosalía López Paniagua, Dante Ariel Ayala Ortiz y Armando Contreras Hernández, constituido por 19 trabajos, divididos en tres secciones. La primera titulada Tierra: tenencia y cultivos transgénicos, contiene 6 trabajos, que abordan el persistente conflicto por la tenencia de la tierra y la producción de soya y maíz transgénico y la asociada acumulación del capital por despojo que caracteriza la agricultura transgénica en México, pero también formas de resistencia como la denuncia de contaminación transgénica en la Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca y las instituciones, actores y gestión en la Reserva de la Biósfera El Triunfo en la Sierra Madre de Chiapas. La segunda sección: Territorio: Explotación y envenenamiento, está compuesta por 5 trabajos que hacen referencia a los conflictos socioambientales derivados de la minería en manos de empresas nacionales y extranjeras omisas y gobiernos cómplices de las consecuencias depredadoras que generan en territorios campesinos e indígenas, debido a su asociación con el narcotráfico y por la contaminación del agua y la tierra que provocan, además de las consecuencias perversas en la salud humana y el entorno natural en diversas regiones del país. En la tercera y última sección, Agua: contaminación y escases, los 8 trabajos que la integran, analizan los conflictos socioterritoriales y luchas por la vida, en diversos estados del país. Se trata de investigaciones que estudian movimientos y conflictos sociales actuales en el campo mexicano, como son las luchas por la defensa del territorio y la defensa de la naturaleza, trabajos que abordan especialmente las disputas por el agua, y los problemas asociados del acceso, la escasez y la contaminación, no solo internos sino con empresas y con el Estado mismo que con la aprobación y aplicación de leyes y reglamentos, el despojo a los campesinos de su territorio en el que han trabajado y vivido por generaciones.INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS AGROPECUARIAS Y RURALES (ICAR), UNIVERSIDAD DE GUADALAJARA, EL COLEGIO DE MICHOACÁN A.C., FACULTAD DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES ACATLÁN-UNAM, ECOSUR, CUCOSTA SUR GRANA, ASOCIACIÓN MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS RURALES A.C

Measuring the economic impact of climate-induced environmental changes on sun-and-beach tourism

Despite the economic importance of the tourism sector and its close relationship to the environment and climate, substantial gaps remain in the investigation of climate change (CC) impacts on tourism. Unlike the increasing body of literature focusing on the variation in the climatic suitability of tourism destinations, this paper focuses on the impacts of CC on the provision of natural resources affecting the attractiveness of destinations. More specifically, the paper provides an economic measurement of climate-induced environmental changes on the coast of Mallorca (Spain), one of the Mediterranean’s leading sun-and-beach destinations. A choice experiment is used to elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) of tourists for the introduction of policies aimed at reducing three climate-induced environmental changes. The estimated results show the positive WTP of tourists to reduce CC impacts and provide evidence of preference heterogeneity among individuals with different socioeconomic and travel characteristics.This work is supported by the CLIMPACT project (CGL2014-54246-C2-1-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy. Alejandra R. Enríquez acknowledges an FPI grant associated with the CLIMPACT project

Assessing beach and dune erosion and vulnerability under sea level rise: A Case study in the Mediterranean Sea

In this study, we estimate the shoreline retreat, the vulnerability and the erosion rates of an open beach-dune system under projected sea level rise (SLR) and the action of wind-waves (separately and in combination). The methodology is based on the combination of two state-of-the-art numerical models (XBeach and Q2D-morfo) applied in a probabilistic framework and it is implemented in an open sandy beach in Menorca Island (Western Mediterranean). We compute the shoreline response to SLR during the 21st century and we assess the changing impacts of storm waves on the aerial beach-dune system. Results demonstrate the relevant role that the beach backshore features, such as the berm, play as coastal defense, reducing the shoreline retreat and dune vulnerability rates in the near-term (a few decades ahead) and highlighting the importance of simulating the beach morphodynamic processes in coastal impacts assessments. Our findings point at SLR as the major driver of the projected impacts over the beach-dune system, leading to an increase of ~25% of the volume eroded due to storm waves by the end of the century with respect to present-day conditions.This work was supported by the CLIMPACT (CGL2014-54246-C2-1-R) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy

Spatial footprints of storm surges along the global coastlines

We perform the first global analysis of the spatial footprints of storm surges, using observed and simulated storm surge data. Three different techniques are applied to quantify the spatial footprints: clustering analysis, percentage of co-occurrence, and joint probability analysis. The capability of the simulated data to represent the observed storm surge footprints is demonstrated. Results lead to the identification of coastline stretches prone to be impacted simultaneously by the same storm surge events. The spatial footprint sizes differ around the globe, partially conditioned by the geography of the coastline, that is, more irregular coastlines consist of a larger number of different storm surge clusters with varying footprint sizes. For the northwestern Atlantic, spatial footprints of storm surges vary when specifically accounting for tropical cyclones, using storm track information in the storm surge simulations. Our results provide important new insights into the spatial footprints of storm surges at the global scale and will help to facilitate improvements in how coastal flood risk is identified, assessed, and managed, by taking these spatial features into account.</p

Efecto del aumento del nivel del mar y del oleaje en la línea de costa: aplicación a la playa de Cala Millor (Mediterráneo Occidental)

Trabajo presentado en el Encuentro Oceanografía Física Española, celebrado en Alicante, España, del 20 al 22 de julio de 2016Peer Reviewe

Changes in beach shoreline due to sea level rise and waves under climate change scenarios: application to the Balearic Islands (western Mediterranean).

[eng] This work assesses the impacts in reshaping coastlines as a result of sea level rise and changes in wave climate. The methodology proposed combines the SWAN and SWASH wave models to resolve the wave processes from deep waters up to the swash zone in two micro-tidal sandy beaches in Mallorca island, western Mediterranean. In a first step, the modelling approach has been validated with observations from wave gauges and from the shoreline inferred from video monitoring stations, showing a good agreement between them. Afterwards, the modelling set-up has been applied to the 21st century sea level and wave projections under two different climate scenarios, representative concentration pathways RCP45 and RCP85. Sea level projections have been retrieved from state-of-the-art regional estimates, while wave projections were obtained from regional climate models. Changes in the shoreline position have been explored under mean and extreme wave conditions. Our results indicate that the studied beaches would suffer a coastal retreat between 7 and up to 50 m, equivalent to half of the present-day aerial beach surface, under the climate scenarios considered

A spatially-dependent synthetic global dataset of extreme sea level events

Current coastal flood risk assessments fail to capture flood spatial dependence at large scales. In this paper, we develop the first global synthetic dataset of spatially-dependent extreme sea level events, by applying an existing conditional multivariate statistical model to 40-year global reanalysis sea levels. The resulting dataset contains 10,000 years of extreme events with realistic spatial dependence under current climate conditions. The benchmarking against reanalysis data demonstrates a high agreement, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.96 for the mean event footprint sizes and a mean bias of −0.04 m for 1 in 50-year water levels. By comparing well-known historic events, we show that our approach can produce events with similar spatial characteristics. Our dataset enables the future development of spatially-dependent flood hazard maps for deriving accurate large-scale risk profiles, which can help yield new insights into the spatial patterns of coastal flooding and support coastal communities in devising effective management plans