Sea-level rise threatens to produce more frequent and severe flooding in coastal regions and is expected to cause trillions of dollars in damages globally if no action is taken to mitigate the issue.
Sea-level rise threatens to produce more frequent and severe flooding in coastal regions and is expected to cause trillions of dollars in damages globally if no action is taken to mitigate the issue. However, communities trying to fight sea-level rise could inadvertently make flooding worse for their neighbors, according to a new study from researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington and the Stanford Natural Capital Project published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Michelle Hummel, an assistant professor of civil engineering at UTA, was lead author of the report, which shows how seawalls constructed along the San Francisco Bay shoreline in California could increase flooding and incur hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for communities throughout the region. The team's findings could also be applied to other coastal regions, such as Texas' Galveston Bay and Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast.
The researchers used complex mathematical models to map how floodwaters--and the economic damages related to floods--would flow depending on where new seawalls were built. They found that blocking certain areas of the bay's shoreline would be particularly damaging to communities throughout the region.
Read more at University of Texas at Arlington
Image: Michelle Hummel, an assistant professor of civil engineering at UTA, was lead author of the report, which shows how seawalls constructed along the San Francisco Bay shoreline in California could increase flooding and incur hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for communities throughout the region. The team's findings could also be applied to other coastal regions, such as Texas' Galveston Bay and Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast. (Credit: UT Arlington)
