Modeling multiple sea level rise stresses reveals up to twice the land at risk compared to strictly passive flooding methods.

ABSTRACT: Planning community resilience to sea level rise (SLR) requires information about where, when, and how SLR hazards will impact the coastal zone. We augment passive flood mapping (the so-called "bathtub" approach) by simulating physical processes posing recurrent threats to coastal infrastructure, communities, and ecosystems in Hawai'i (including tidally-forced direct marine and groundwater flooding, seasonal wave inundation, and chronic coastal erosion). We find that the "bathtub" approach, alone, ignores 35-54 percent of the total land area exposed to one or more of these hazards, depending on location and SLR scenario. We conclude that modeling dynamic processes, including waves and erosion, is essential to robust SLR vulnerability assessment. Results also indicate that as sea level rises

SUBMITTER: Anderson TR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6160426 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature