Integrated Natural and Built Environment Strategies for Adapting to Sea Level Rise
Author | : Rong Zeng |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 117 |
Release | : 2014 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:908645727 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (27 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: Global climate change is happening. The resulting rising sea levels particularly put coastal communities at high risk and threaten the long-term sustainability of both the natural and built environments. Coastal habitats, which are significant connections between the land and water, especially for rural coastal communities, are expected to gradually migrate inland in response to sea level rise. However, human interventions such as buildings, roads, and hard shoreline protection structures will potentially impede this process, therefore becoming a critical factor in habitat loss in the future. Given this consideration, adaptation strategies for sea level rise need to be planned ahead in order to balance the tradeoffs between the linked social and ecological systems. This thesis focuses on exploring integrated adaptation strategies to address sea level rise impacts for both the natural and built environments. Two primary research questions were generated: (1) How to enhance the social-ecological resilience of a community in coping with climate change and sea level rise? (2) What are sustainable adaptation strategies for both the natural and built environments in long-term planning? The methodology of this thesis is developed and composed of three parts: first, comprehensive analysis of five case studies to identify the proposed adaptation strategies for different coastal communities and the extent to which an integrated approach was incorporated into each; second, developing an evaluation framework to assess the sustainability of a variety of strategies and the performance of the integrated strategies; third, designing adaptation strategies for the thesis study area Yankeetown-Inglis, Florida, in order to examine the application of integrated strategies.