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Mapping Coastal Change Hazards

Introduction

Coastal changes such as beach, dune and sea-cliff erosion, that occur during hurricanes and severe winter storms pose significant hazards to buildings and infrastructure that are built too close to vulnerable shorelines. Societal costs, in dollars spent and lives lost, can be staggering.

Northeasters

El Niño

Hurricanes

Resource managers must be able to predict where and how much coastal change will occur in order to locate new construction landward of coastal change hazards. Developing this predictive capability requires quantifying how coasts respond to extreme storms.

NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper

With its rapidity of acquisition and very high data density, airborne lidar (light detecting and ranging) is revolutionizing the quantification of storm-induced coastal change. Comparisons of before and after storm lidar surveys quantify patterns in erosion and accretion.

National Coastal Lidar Coverage: USGS, NASA, NOAA, Texas Bureau of Economic Geology Note: Data gathered through 2000 available from NOAA's Coastal Services Center at: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/tcm/index.html

U. S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
Coastal and Marine Geology Program

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Updated May 07, 2001 @ 04:18 PM (THF)