Coastal infrastructureCoastal communities preparing for the next high tide
The USC Sea Grant program is continuing the work it started three years ago to help coastal communities in Southern California incorporate “resilience” into their planning for adaptation to rising sea levels and climate change. From Santa Barbara to San Diego, Sea Grant works with researchers and community leaders to help governments, businesses and community groups know the resources available to help them plan ahead. The Sea Grant vulnerability report for the city was based on a pilot version of the USGS modeling system, called CoSMoS 1.0, which makes predictions of storm-induced coastal flooding based on a moderately severe storm that occurred in the region in January 2010. It models storm-driven sea level rise for two future climate scenarios, which can help emergency responders and coastal planners anticipate storm hazards and make plans to allocate resources to deal with them.
The USC Sea Grant program is continuing the work it started three years ago to help coastal communities in Southern California incorporate “resilience” into their planning for adaptation to rising sea levels and climate change.
From Santa Barbara to San Diego, Sea Grant works with researchers and community leaders to help governments, businesses and community groups know the resources available to help them plan ahead.
“We refer to our approach as an ‘adaptive adaptation’ strategy,” said Phyllis Grifman, associate director of USC Sea Grant, which is based at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “Information about climate change and sea level rise is going to keep changing; there will be new information all the time. That’s important for people to understand so they can start planning now for their communities with confidence. They don’t need to wait for ‘perfect information.’ The idea that this information might be ‘perfect’ at some point in the future can be paralyzing in the present.”
Climate change adaptations
A USC release reports that one year ago, USC Sea Grant released a study commissioned by the Los Angeles city government titled Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Study for the City of Los Angeles. The Sea Grant staff members who led its work on the study and continue to work on climate change adaptation projects are Alyssa Newton Mann, regional research and planning specialist, and Juliette Finzi Hart, marine and climate science specialist.
USC Sea Grant is building on the vulnerability study for LA and to apply the same methods to the rest of LA County, from Malibu to Long Beach. The work is supported by the California State Coastal Conservancy, the California Ocean Protection Council, and the California Coastal Commission. It involves refined studies of beach trends and characterization of the “backshore” — the area “behind the beach.”
“In this region, the beaches are the main buffer against the ocean,” Grifman said. “One of our major recommendations in the report to the city of LA was that the beaches need to be monitored for trends in beach width and slope in concert with the county, which manages many of the beaches, and with the beach cities.”
