Santa Barbara County residents love their coastline, from the small-town beaches of Carpinteria to Santa Barbara’s waterfront to camping hotspots like Jalama Beach and dramatic Guadalupe Dunes.
Santa Barbara County residents love their coastline, from the small-town beaches of Carpinteria to Santa Barbara’s waterfront to camping hotspots like Jalama Beach and dramatic Guadalupe Dunes. But drastic changes are in store in coming decades as temperatures and sea levels rise, bringing massive impacts to local ecology and human systems.
To help local coastal and land use managers prepare, a multidisciplinary team of researchers has synthesized projected changes to the Santa Barbara coast that are expected as a result of the warming climate, as well as options for adaptation. The new study is published in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management.
The paper specific to the Santa Barbara area is a joint effort between researchers at UC Santa Barbara, California Sea Grant, U.S. Geological Survey, UMass Amherst, Northeastern University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
Read more at University of California - Santa Barbara
Photo: Exceptionally high tides, such as this king tide at Butterfly Beach in Montecito in January 2019, are expected to become the norm in the coming decades. Photo Credit: MONIQUE MYERS/MARINE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
