Sea and storm coastal habitats offer strongest defense

Surging storms and rising seas threaten millions of U.S. residents and billions of dollars in property along coastlines. The nation's strongest defense, according to a new study by scientists with the Natural Capital Project at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, comes from natural coastal habitats. 

Of the 25 most densely populated counties in the United States, 23 of them are along the coastline. The study, "Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms" published in Nature Climate Change, mapped the entire U.S. coastline and reports that habitats such as sea grasses, mangroves, sand dunes, and coral reefs currently protect two-thirds of the U.S. coastline, including at-risk areas such as New York and Florida. 

"The natural environment plays a key role in protecting our nation's coasts," said study lead author Katie Arkema, a Woods postdoctoral scholar. "If we lose these defenses, we will either have to have massive investments in engineered defenses or risk greater damage to millions of people and billions in property." 

Damage to the town of Mantoloking, New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. Photo in the public domain. 

Although attempts at protecting coastal population centers have typically involved hardening shorelines with "gray technologies" such as cement sea walls, there are disadvantages to engineered solutions. Not only are they expensive to build and difficult to maintain, but they can reduce the natural beauty of an area, increase erosion, affect water quality, and deplete the number of marine creatures living in the region. In fact, many "gray" solutions may actually damage natural habitats that are already acting as protection for coastlines. 

Conservation and restoration of shoreline marshes, seagrass beds, oyster beds, coral reefs, dunes, coastal forests, and large kelp forests offer natural defense mechanisms for coastlines, buffering them from waves and storm surges. Loss of these habitats would increase the vulnerability of human populations, with the economies of the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico expected to suffer the most damage. 

"Hardening our shorelines with sea walls and other costly engineering shouldn't be the default solution," says Peter Kareiva, the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and co-author of the study. "This study helps us identify those places and opportunities we have to keep nature protecting our coastal communities – and giving us all the other benefits it can provide, such as recreation, fish nurseries, water filtration and erosion control." 

Hurricane Sandy alone caused $68 billion in damage to the U.S. Soon, billions more will be spent on restoration of other areas affected by the storm along the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. This study provides critical national and localized information for coastal planners who are considering where conservation and restoration efforts could have the biggest impacts. 

"As a nation, we should be investing in nature to protect our coastal communities," said Mary Ruckelshaus, managing director of the Natural Capital Project. "The number of people, poor families, elderly and total value of residential property that are most exposed to hazards can be reduced by half if existing coastal habitats remain fully intact." 



CITATION: Arkema, K. et al. Coastal habitats shield people and property from sea-level rise and storms. 2013. Nature Climate Change, 3, 913-918. 
Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2013/1011-kimbrough-coastal-habitats-climate-change-defense.html#0TVixRtUgIG1WDSU.99

Plan designed to upgrade Mekong Delta dykes

A plan has been developed to upgrade the sea and estuary dykes system in the Mekong Delta in response to rising sea levels caused by climate change, according to the Southern Institute for Water Resources Planning (SIWR). 

Under the plan, nearly 620km of sea dykes and over 740km of estuary dykes in the region will be upgraded or newly constructed by 2025. They will be six metres wide, with forests outside the dyke to reduce the impact of waves. 

Constructions built below dykes are arranged so as to prevent natural disasters, control water salinity and protect aquaculture, transportation and other needs. 

It is forecast that by the end of this century, rising sea levels caused by global climate change will inundate an area of up to 15,000-20,000 square kilometres in the Mekong Delta. Nine out of the 13 provinces and cities in the region will be almost completely submerged, seriously affecting agriculture. 

The upgrade of sea and estuary dykes also aims to protect the lives and property of locals, as well as ensure production and infrastructure, creating favourable conditions for sustainable socio-development in the region.-VNA

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Destructive flooding puts central Vietnam at risk

Life after the recent spate of floods in central Vietnam is so tough that many residents are wilting under the strain. All aspects of life seem to have been turned upside down, from food and housing to education and work. 

A day after the historically devastating floods, farming families in Quang Ngai province started eating beef for the first time. Normally, their incomes are so low they never taste the meat, but this time it was a matter of survival. 

 
Despite the risk of disease, they were forced to eat the drowned animals because the floods wiped out their rice crops and drowned their buffaloes and cattle. 

In Nghia Hanh district alone, floods killed about 1,000 cows and buffaloes, 4,700 pigs and 67,700 chickens. Many survived on the dead animals for several days until emergency supplies reached them. 

The floods that followed two typhoons sweeping in from the East Sea were at times made worse by the unannounced release of water from hydro-electricity reservoirs. 

The extra deluge took many human lives and also destroyed farm houses, crops and farm stock. 

"The floods left them with nothing," said Nguyen Van Thanh, head of the Hue-based Phuc's Fond charity group. "All they had were their bare hands to save themselves." 

Thanh made many trips to provide urgent assistance after the devastation around Hue city and throughout Quang Binh province. 

In emergencies, instant noodles are considered fast and convenient, but their nutritional value is not high enough to sustain people frantically working to stay alive. That's why many farmers turned to eating meat from drowned farm animals. 

Survivors also had to spend many nights in the open as there were no dry or clean clothes or blankets left. This weakened them further, making them more susceptible to disease and making efforts to clean up the mess even harder. 

According to Hoang The Vinh, an officer with the Hue Union of Friendship Organisations, even though central provinces are hit by floods and storms every year, few authorities have established offices to co-ordinate emergency assistance. 

He said the union needed clear information about the needs in each area because it had to arrange for help from many international organisations and Vietnamese donors. "This time, we needed statistics about what people were desperate for, but authorities often failed to supply it," he said. 

This meant many victims received little assistance or were given items that did not match their needs. 

Nguyen Thi Hoang Ni, a charity volunteer, said the situation in Binh Dinh and Quang Binh provinces was similar. 

She said many houses in both provinces were flooded to their roof tops, destroying stocks of rice seed for planting and children's school and exercise books. 

Afterwards, many children held their note books in their hands and wept when they found most of their writing had been destroyed by flood waters. They were particularly grief stricken because they place their hopes for a better life in their studies. 

Binh Dinh authorities have by now supplied about 2,000 tonnes of rice seed to plant out the winter-spring crops and 1,000 tonnes of rice to feed people on the verge of starvation. 

This sounds like a welcome move, but most farmers feel the authorities have little idea what they are suffering. 

The 200 farmers in Phuoc Yen village on the outskirts of Hue said they had to deal with most problems by themselves. 

In early November, the super flood caused by the discharge of water from the Huong Dien and Binh Dien hydro-power plants covered their vegetable fields with silt. Farmers have now started growing nutritious rau ma vegetables from seedlings found in the forest. 

"We have to replant the fields, and this takes time," said farmer Nguyen Dinh Cuong. 

Another farmer, Le Thi Nu, said the floods swallowed 50sq.m of his field. "The width of the river has doubled and bank erosion is an ever present threat to our lives," he said. 

The floods have not only taken all or most of what many farmers owned but also meant that life will not become easier, even in the distant future. The pain is made worse for those who lost relatives and friends in the disaster. 

These are the main reasons farmers are calling for the Government's tighter management of hydro-power plants.-VNA

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Coastal erosion a constant threat to Vietnam

With a long coastline, coastal erosion is a constant threat to Vietnam and is getting more serious as a consequence of more storms and rising sea levels caused by climate change, experts reported at a workshop in Hanoi on July 17. 

Addressing the workshop, which discussed the national assessment report on coastal erosion, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Administration of Seas and Islands Vu Si Tuan said Vietnam has implemented an array of programmes at different levels to assess the situation of erosion and deposition, particularly in key regions, and built scientific bases for prevention measures. 

However, the country has not been able to solve many problems relating to this threat, he said, adding that the YEOSU coastal erosion project run by the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA) is greatly helpful to COBSEA members, including Vietnam. 

The drafting of the national assessment report on coastal erosion will provide input information for COBSEA to build a regional project to address challenges posed by climate change in general and coastal erosion in particular. 

According to the project’s consultant Rey Monila, it aims to build COBSEA members’ resilience and management capacity of coastal erosion and sea level rise threats. 

At the workshop, participants suggested a number of measures, for example protecting forests, raising local people’s awareness and building a database of coastal erosion.-VNA

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