Coastal communities throughout the US West Coast and elsewhere are facing the daunting task of preparing for climate change impacts, particularly the hazards from increased flooding and erosion. With sea-level rise, changing storminess patterns, and possible changes to the frequency and severity of major El Niño events, communities are already...
Recent coastal disasters (e.g., Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan) and chronic issues (e.g., Florida's "nuisance flooding") provide numerous examples of coastal communities struggling to adapt in the face of climate change impacts. Decision-makers and the public alike must reconcile the lack of "fit" between a rapidly changing environment and the effects...
Hazards threaten coastal communities and ecosystems over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. One of the most pressing concerns for coastal property owners, decision makers, and researchers is the uncertain role that a changing climate will have on the intensity and frequency of these hazards. The significant uncertainties associated with...
Documented trends in rising sea levels, storminess, and extreme wave heights have the potential to increase the frequency and magnitude of coastal change hazards, increasing risks to coastal infrastructure and environmental resources. Coastal planners and decision makers need information about the impacts of future hazards in order to apply mitigation...
Coastal foredunes protect lives, infrastructure, and ecosystems during severe winter storms. In the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW), coastal foredune geomorphology is determined by both physical and ecological mechanisms. Before the 1900's, the native plant Elymus mollis was the dominant dune grass and dune morphology was largely determined by sediment supply...
This study utilizes probabilistic surrogate modeling techniques around San Diego Bay with an emphasis on naval infrastructure and operations to evaluate the impact of five global mean sea level rise scenarios (GMSLR). Spatially continuous total water levels (TWLs) are combined with a digital elevation model (DEM) of the region to...
Coastal flooding and erosion are major concerns for low lying coastal communities -- particularly in light of accelerated sea level rise and climate change. To improve quantitative understanding of the physical drivers of both flooding and coastal landscape change, this dissertation explores coastal morphodynamics bridging the land-sea interface on modally...
Coastal and estuarine flooding and erosion events are usually driven by the cumulative effect of multiple individual processes like waves, streamflow, storm surge, and/or tides. This dissertation focuses on separating the influence of the regional and local-scale geomorphologic and hydrodynamic processes driving variability in the magnitude and impacts of extreme...
Sand dunes provide coastal communities critical protection from flooding and erosion, as well as a habitat for a range of species- some threatened or endangered. As such, it is of importance to develop a quantitative understanding of the processes through which these systems evolve at a variety of temporal and...
Understanding sandbar dynamics and variability is integral to developing a predictive
capacity for nearshore flows, sediment transport, morphological change, and
ultimately for determining coastline exposure to damaging storm waves. Along the
high-energy U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) coast, sandbars typically dominate the
bathymetry of the active zone. Here we report on...
Coastal flood hazard zones and the design of coastal defenses are often devised using either the maximum recorded total water level (TWL) or a 'design' event such as the 100-year return-level flood, usually projected from observed extreme events. Despite technological advances driving more consistent instrumental records of wave heights and...
Coastal hazards are the result of numerous physical processes cumulatively causing water levels to flood and erode the land. The waves, storm surges, tides, and run-off contributing to elevated water levels are each the product of chaotic and random weather patterns. These stochastic weather patterns dissipate energy in Earth's climate...